Dr. Tamar Ben Shaanan

Early on in her studies of psychology and biology, Tamar Ben Shaanan realized just how little we understand about the way cognitive and emotional experiences influence physiological responses.

Dr. Ben Shaanan’s lab in the Department of Molecular Neuroscience at Weizmann Institute of Science contributes to both neuroscience and tissue biology by focusing on pain as a sensory-emotional experience that orchestrates post-injury behavioral and physiological responses. Using mouse genetics, high-resolution genomics, and state-of-the-art tools, her team compares communication between nociceptors (specialized sensory neurons underlying pain perception) and healthy and injured tissue-resident cells. She hopes to reshape our relationship with pain by unlocking its therapeutic potential in the context of tissue regeneration.

Dr. Ben Shaanan earned her PhD in Medical Sciences at Technion’s Department of Immunology and Neuroscience in the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine. She focused on brain-body interactions, showing how activating the brain’s reward system, a brain region associated with positive emotions and expectations, enhances antibacterial immunity. With cancer, she demonstrated that reward system activation could boost anti-tumor immune response.

As a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of California, San Francisco, Dr. Ben Shaanan showed that nociceptors regulate a previously unknown cellular pathway connecting the sensation of pain with accelerated hair growth in uninjured skin, and enabled efficient hair follicle regeneration following injury.

Dr. Ben Shaanan hopes to reveal the role of pain in tissue recovery by exploring the physiological connections between painful experiences, nociceptors activity, and tissue-resident cell function.