RESEARCH

To me, pain is the most endlessly fascinating topic there is to study! Pain's sensory, cognitive, and emotional facets combine to create an experience that is both universal and uniquely personal, protective and - in some cases - deeply destructive. About 1 in 5 Canadians live with chronic pain, and many chronic pain conditions are more common and more severe in women.

By combining neuroimaging, psychophysics, questionnaires & interviews, I want to answer questions such as:

  • how do qualitative sex & gender differences in pain processing and modulation influence one's susceptibility to and experience of chronic pain? (you can read my book chapter on sex & gender differences in pain here)

  • how might sex & gender affect one's response to novel pain treatments? (eg. brain stimulation, CBT, mindfulness, virtual reality, psilocybin etc.)

  • What role do hormones play in pain perception, eg. in girls experiencing first menses and women experiencing menopause? How can we better understand and treat historically understudied pain conditions in women, such as endometriosis, dysmenorrhea, and dyspareunia?

My training has taught me that the most successful and impactful research:

  • is Patient Partnered - I first learned about the invaluable role patients can & should play in identifying research questions, study design, recruitment & dissemination in an interview with extraordinary Patient Advocates Dr. Leslie Levine and Jacques LalibertĂ© (listen here)

  • has a KTT plan - ensuring the knowledge generated by your research is translated and transferred to the public (particularly the relevant patients, clinicians & policy makers) is vital to its implementation. I also just love Science Communication, see my efforts here!

Some of my research has been featured by the University Health Network (here) and in the Krembil Research Institute's Annual Report (here).

PhD, Medical Science

University of Toronto Advisor: Dr. Karen Davis

At the Krembil Research Institute I combined neuroimaging (fMRI) and psychophysical techniques to study ascending and descending pain modulation and surgical treatment outcome in patients with chronic pain. I'm especially interested in sex-differences in pain-related brain & behavioural characteristics.

See some of the papers from my PhD below!

Carpal tunnel surgery dampens thalamocortical and normalizes corticocortical functional connectivity (Brain Communications)

How does peripheral neuropathy and its treatment influence brain function? Longitudinal fMRI of people who had surgical treatment for carpal tunnel syndrome revealed reduced thalamocortical functional connectivity post-op. This may reflect central neuroplasticity in response to resolved abnormal sensory signals from the repaired peripheral nerve.

Findings summarized in this tweetorial, or read the paper here.

Sex-specific abnormalities and treatment-related plasticity of sgACC functional connectivity in chronic pain (Frontiers in Pain Research)

The sgACC has previously been associated with depression and peripheral inflammation, but what about pain? We examined this key region of the brain's descending pain modulation system. Overall, sex, age & chronic pain influenced sgACC connectivity, which also showed plasticity after treatment.

See this tweetorial for a summary or find the full paper here.

Abnormal subgenual anterior cingulate circuitry is unique to women but not men with chronic pain (PAIN)

We examined functional connectivity of the sgACC in a chronic pain condition that is more common in men (ankylosing spondylitis, AS). We found sex differences that were more extensive in chronic pain vs. healthy controls, and sgACC abnormalities only in the women with AS.

Results summarized in this tweetorial, full paper available here.

MSc, Psychology

Western University Advisor: Dr. Adrian Owen

I used fMRI in healthy participants and patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC) to explore the cognitive distinction between command following and communicating using both imagined and executed motor responses. Read more here.

My experience working with DOC patients made me wonder: what if some of our non-communicative patients are experiencing pain? If so, how could we tell? It's a question I still hope to answer one day - read my article on decoding pain in DOCs here.

BSc, Biomedical Science

University of Guelph Advisor: Dr. Francesco Leri

In my 4th year Honours thesis project I investigated the learning processes involved in acquisition of heroin self-administration in a rodent model of opioid drug addiction. I studied heroin's reinforcing properties in classical and operant conditioning models.