People don’t come preassembled but glued together by life. Each time one of us is constructed, a different result occurs. LeDoux, (2002, p.3).
Our research focuses on understanding the complex relationships between the brain, chronic pain severity, and environmental, psychosocial, and behavioral risk and buffering factors. We have investigated pain-related brain structures, areas of the brain associated with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia (ADRD) risk, and brain age gap, (BAG) a measure of structural brain age. The benefit of a structural brain age measure is that it allows us to assess broad relationships within the brain with a clear interpretable direction of associations (e.g., higher brain age gap means the brain is older than chronological age with the implication that there could be accelerated aging of the brain).
Associated Publications:
Environmental and sociocultural factors are associated with pain-related brain structure among diverse individuals with chronic musculoskeletal pain: intersectional considerations. PMID: 38565879
Greater socioenvironmental risk factors and higher chronic pain stage are associated with thinner bilateral temporal lobes. PMID: 37984835
Chronic Pain Severity and Sociodemographics: An Evaluation of the Neurobiological Interface. PMID: 34425249
Relationships between Chronic Pain Stage, Cognition, Temporal Lobe Cortex, and Sociodemographic Variables. PMID: 33720889
Resilience, Pain, and the Brain: Relationships Differ by Sociodemographics. PMID: 33606287