Talma Hendler (

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

: תלמה הנדלר; born July 9, 1955) is an Israeli psychiatrist and neuroscientist. Her work focuses on functional brain imaging to study human emotional responses, particularly in relation to stress and trauma. Hendler is a professor at

Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) is a Public university, public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Located in northwest Tel Aviv, the university is the center of teaching and ...

, holding appointments in the School of Psychological Science, the departments of physiology and pharmacology, the department of psychiatry within the Faculty of Medicine, and the Sagol School of Neuroscience. She is also the founding director of the Sagol Brain Institute in

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

Biography

Hendler received a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public university, public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. ...

. She later earned a medical degree (MD) from

and a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

psychobiology Behavioral neuroscience, also known as biological psychology, biopsychology, or psychobiology,Psychobi ...

from

Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public university, public research university in Stony Brook, New York, United States, on Long Island. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is on ...

in New York. After returning to Israel, she completed her residency in psychiatry at

Sheba Medical Center Chaim Sheba Medical Center at Tel HaShomer (), also known as Tel HaShomer Hospital, is the largest hospital in Israel, located in the Tel Aviv District city of Ramat Gan in the Tel HaShomer neighborhood, Israel. In 2025, ''Newsweek'' ranked it as ...

. She subsequently joined the

Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center (), commonly referred to as Ichilov Hospital () is the largest teaching hospital and general hospital serving Tel Aviv, Israel and its metropolitan area and is the second-largest hospital complex in the country. T ...

, where she established the Sagol Brain Institute, which has been described as Israel's first research facility dedicated to human

neuroimaging Neuroimaging is the use of quantitative (computational) techniques to study the neuroanatomy, structure and function of the central nervous system, developed as an objective way of scientifically studying the healthy human brain in a non-invasive ...

. Hendler was married to the Israeli film director Judd Ne'eman until his death in September 2021. They had two daughters.

Research

Hendler's research utilizes

techniques, such as

fMRI Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area o ...

and

EEG Electroencephalography (EEG) is a method to record an electrogram of the spontaneous electrical activity of the brain. The bio signals detected by EEG have been shown to represent the postsynaptic potentials of pyramidal neurons in the neoc ...

, to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying emotional processing and regulation. A significant area of her work is the study of factors that contribute to either vulnerability or resilience to

psychiatric disorders A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness, a mental health condition, or a psychiatric disability, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. A mental disorder is ...

following stressful events. Her research group studies emotional and perceptual processing in both healthy individuals and those with brain pathologies. Her team has investigated brain responses in individuals with

post-traumatic stress disorder Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental disorder that develops from experiencing a Psychological trauma, traumatic event, such as sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, warfare and its associated traumas, natural disaster ...

(PTSD), examining how their brains react to emotionally charged stimuli. Peer-reviewed studies from her lab have shown that in PTSD patients, the

visual cortex The visual cortex of the brain is the area of the cerebral cortex that processes visual information. It is located in the occipital lobe. Sensory input originating from the eyes travels through the lateral geniculate nucleus in the thalam ...

can exhibit strong responses to trauma-related images even when the images are presented in a way that prevents conscious recognition.

References

{{Authority control 1955 births Living people Israeli psychiatrists Women psychiatrists 20th-century Israeli scientists 20th-century Israeli women scientists 21st-century Israeli scientists 21st-century Israeli women scientists Hebrew University of Jerusalem alumni Stony Brook University alumni Academic staff of Tel Aviv University