Assistant Professor of Neuroscience,
Jimena Perez Sanchez is an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience. She completed her undergraduate and Masters studies in Mexico, before moving to Canada to pursue a PhD in Neurobiology at Laval University. Here, she worked with Prof. Yves De Koninck and identified two inhibitory mechanisms that modulate activity in the spinal cord. She then moved to France for a postdoctoral position at the Institute of Neuroscience Timone in Marseille, followed by a second postdoc at the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Oxford working with Prof. David Bennett. Alongside her research, she has been actively involved in fostering academic communities. She was one of the founding members of the Clinical Neurosciences, which aimed at bringing together students and early career researchers for networking and career development at NDCN in Oxford. Previously she was also part of the Quebec Network of Junior Pain Investigators also promoting networking within the pain research field.
The spinal cord is a highly heterogenous and densely interconnected network of neurons organised across distinct laminae, each receiving different combinations of noxious and innocuous sensory input and subject to strong local and descending inhibitory control. This architecture enables spinal circuits to regulate signal gain, temporal dynamics, and modality specificity before generating output to the brain. The Perez-Sanchez lab aims to understand the mechanisms by which the spinal cord can select somatosensory information that is relevant to navigate in the natural world, in normal and pathological conditions. Our research focuses on the neural circuits that drive painful stimuli; from the activation of sensory neurons in the periphery, to descending pathways that modulate this information in the spinal cord. We use electrophysiology, but also imaging and behavioural assays, to study the impact of changes in sensory afferents and dorsal horn neurons in the spinal cord.
School of Life Sciences海角黑料Medical School Queen's Medical CentreNottingham NG7 2UH