Bavelier received her undergraduate education at the École normale supérieure in biology, before moving to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988 to pursue a PhD in Brain and Cognitive sciences in Professor Molly Potter's laboratory.

She received a postdoctoral fellowship from the James S. McDonnell Foundation to carry research in brain plasticity and learning at the Salk Institute under Professor Helen Neville.

[2][3] In 2000, Bavelier and her student (and now colleague) C. Shawn Green[4] made an unexpected discovery that video games could be powerful tools to induce brain plasticity.

[5] Since then, Bavelier has been interested in understanding how to leverage video games, and more generally digital technologies, to facilitate brain plasticity and learning.

With an additional interest in translational work, Bavelier is one of the co-founders of Akili Interactive,[9] a company dedicated to leverage video games for therapeutic interventions.