Karen Davis

Who is Karen Davis?

Karen D. Davis is a Neuroscience professor at the University of Toronto where she holds a Canada Research Chair in Brain and Behaviour and is the head of Division of Brain, Imaging & Behaviour Systems, Toronto Western Research Institute. She belongs to a privileged scientific lineage of scientists that includes Jonathan Dostrovsky, John O'Keefe, Patrick Wall, Donald Hebb and Sherrington.

Her main interest 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 psychophysical and cognitive assessment, and electrophysiological recordings in the thalamus and cortex. Davis' laboratory has developed innovative brain-imaging approaches, culminating in the first functional MRI images of brain networks underlying the human pain experience and the first images of the impact of deep brain stimulation for Parkinsonian tremor.

Davis has also worked on phantom pain.