The main interest of my lab is the central mechanisms underlying pain and temperature perception, the influence of attention, and mechanisms of plasticity under normal conditions and in patients with neurologic or psychiatric disorders. A variety of experimental techniques are used, including functional brain imaging (fMRI, PET), psychophysical and cognitive assessment, and electrophysiological recordings in the thalamus and cortex.

The lab has been refining imaging and electrophysiological techniques to allow for clinically-relevant investigations of pain, temperature sense and movement disorders in normal and injured states. For instance, we are developing tools to detect brain activity related to at different perceptual outcomes evoked by thermal and painful stimuli and how these are altered in different attentional states. For instance, whether separate cortical or thalamic regions are involved in specific tasks (such as was found for attention and pain-regions in the cingulate cortex) reveal important organizational patterns in normal and diseased states. These data may assist in diagnoses (pre-surgical, psychiatric, etc.) in a variety of patient groups.

Specific projects include:

• Psychophysical studies of the qualities of pain evoked by cold
  
• Functional MRI studies of the cortical network associated with particular aspects of the somatic pain experience (prickling pain, cold pain, etc.).
• Physiological, psychophysical and fMRI studies of rectal pain in irritable bowel syndrome stimuli.
• Functional MRI studies of the cortical attention network under normal conditions and in patients with obsessive compulsive disorder.
• Functional MRI studies of the interaction between pain and attention.
• Electrophysiological studies of thalamic and cortical neurons encoding pain and attention.
• Electrophysiological studies of plasticity in patients with chronic pain, or movement disorders.
  
• Psychophysical studies of phantom sensations following amputation.
• Imaging and electrophysiological studies of the effects of deep brain stimulation.

Additional Appointments

• Chair, Medical Technology Innovation Priority Platform (TWRI)
• Canada Research Chair in Brain and Behavior
• Professor, Department of Surgery, University of Toronto
• Associate Director, Institute of Medical Science, University of Toronto

Perform an automatic PubMed search of this researcher's publications.