The psychology of interactive decision making, Perception of Regularities.
Courses Taught:
The psychology of decision making; Introduction to cognitive psychology; Introduction to computers in eduction
Grants:
ISF 382/20 – the dynamics of self-sorting; BSF 2015206 – the sustainability game: inducing and fostering environmentally responsible behavior; ISF 996/15 – be the tail of the lions or the head of the foxes?; ISF 121/11 – short-term regret and its effect on repeated decisions; GIF 2008/120 – the monitoring of changing environment
Published in:
Cognition; Psychological Science; Cognitive Science; Journal of Experimental Psychology: General; Theory & Decision
The main research interests of our group are the evolution and mechanisms underlying sociality and social behavior, we study bees as a model. To study these fascinating and intricate phenomena we integrate analyses at different levels, from molecular to social. In recent years, one of our main research focuses has been the interplay between circadian rhythms and social behavior ("sociochronobiology") but we also study additional important sociobiological processes such as size-related division of labor in bumblebees, the social evolution of juvenile hormone signaling, the interplay between sleep and social behavior, and the involvement of non-coding RNA and RNA editing in behavioral plasticity.
Courses Taught:
Animal Behavior
Sociobiology
Biological clocks
Prizes and Awards:
Fulbright Postdoctoral Award (1997)
Nominated as a Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Senior Lecturer in Life Sciences (2004)
Prof. Hannah Farkas-Himsley and Alexander Himsley Prize for Excellence in in Life Sciences (2005)
Clark Way Harrison Visiting Professorship in Arts and Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis (2015)
The Hebrew University Rector List of excellent teachers (2018)
Grants:
Clock organization and socially mediated behavioral plasticity in honey bees. German – Israeli Foundation (G.I.F.), 2006-2008, (€180,000)
CINCHRON - Marie Sklodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks (European Commission; grant number 765937), 6/2018 – 5/2022 (Euro 260,300/3,809,005)
ICOB: miRNAs and the social regulation of behavioral plasticity. BSF-NSF; Integrative Organismal Systems (IOS) Special Program, 2013-2016 (US$ 670,000)
Collective behavior of oscillators: From cells to societies. The National Academies Keck Futures Initiative (NAKFI), 2015-2017 (US$100,000)
Toward an integrative science of collective behavior: A cross-species model for the interplay between individual variation and behavioral plasticity and its influence on group performance. The National Academies Keck Futures Initiative (NAKFI), 2015-2017 (US$100,000)
Uncoupling internal clocks as a mechanism for plasticity in circadian rhythms. ISF 2015-2020 (INS 2,450,000 total)
Representative Publications
Bloch G, Robinson GE (2001) Reversal of honeybee behavioural rhythms. Nature 410: 1048.
The Honey Bee Genome Sequencing Consortium (authors from my group: Rubin, E., Shemesh Y, Cohen M, Bloch G) (2006). Insights into social insects from the genome of the honey bee Apis mellifera. Nature 443: 931-949.
Bloch G, et al. (2010) Industrial apiculture in the Jordan valley during Biblical times with Anatolian honey bees. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 107: 11240-11244
Fuchikawa T, Eban-Rothschild A, Nagari M, Shemesh Y, Bloch G (2016) Potent social synchronization can override photic entrainment of circadian rhythms. Nature Communications 7: 11662; DOI: 10.1038/ncomms11662
Porath HT, et al…, Bloch G (2019) RNA editing is abundant and correlates with task performance in a social bumblebee. Nature Communications 10: 1605
Nagari M, Gera A, Jonsson S, Bloch G (2019) Bumble bee workers give up sleep to care for offspring that are not their own. Current Biology 29 (20), 3488-3493
I investigate the biological underpinnings of human social behavior. Specifically, I'm interested in the role of neurohypophysial hormones, sex hormones, and cortisol in regulating human cooperative, aggressive, and competitive behaviors.
Theoretical modeling of a wide range of biological Patterns and processes: Evolution, Ecology, Development, Regulation and Control, Behaviour, Population Interactions, Learning.