Chronic Pain Network

Principal Applicant

Karen Davis, PhD is a neuroscientist whose research uses brain imaging to investigate brain mechanisms underlying chronic pain, pain-attention interactions, outcomes of traumatic injuries, plasticity associated with treatment and recovery, and individual factors that contribute to disease vulnerability and recovery.  

She is a Full Professor in the Department of Surgery and the Institute of Medical Science at the University of Toronto, and Head of the Division of Brain, Imaging and Behaviour – Systems Neuroscience at the Krembil Research at University Health Network.  

Dr. Davis has given over 160 invited lectures and her work has culminated in over 185 published papers and book chapters, with 13,000+ citations and an H-index of 63.  She also created a TED-Ed video “How does your brain respond to pain?” viewed over 1 million times. Dr Davis is a Councilor of the International Association for the Study of Pain, is active in research ethics, created a graduate student oath (published in Science), and in neuroethics pertaining to the development of a brain imaging-based indicators of pain. Dr. Davis was inducted into the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars in 2009.