# overview
My work focuses on understanding the sources of disparities in pain, and the specific mechanisms by which social and cultural factors alter pain experience and pain physiology. My research targets the problem of pain disparities from two directions - investigating the different ways social factors may influence one's own pain, and also alter pain perception and empathy for others. To tackle these problems, my lab utilizes behavioral, psychophysical, and neuroimaging methodologies. I am also interested in individual differences in chronic pain and pain modulation, cross-cultural examinations of pain and empathy, and social environmental effects on health broadly defined.

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3201 Cardiovascular Medicine And Haematology

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1.2 Psychological And Socioeconomic Processes

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2.3 Psychological, Social And Economic Factors

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4201 Allied Health And Rehabilitation Science

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1.1 Normal Biological Development And Functioning

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Clinical Trials And Supportive Activities

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2.3 Psychological, Social And Economic Factors

# educationAndTraining[].organization.label
Northwestern University - (Evanston, Illinois, United States)

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Boston University - (Boston, Massachusetts, United States)

# educationAndTraining[].organization.label
Northwestern University - (Evanston, Illinois, United States)

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High Frequency Migraine Is Associated with Lower Acute Pain Sensitivity and Abnormal Insula Activity Related to Migraine Pain Intensity, Attack Frequency, and Pain Catastrophizing.

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Subjective Age is Associated with Temporal Summation of Mechanical Pain

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CultureGene Coevolution of Empathy and Altruism

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(130) Gender differences in the relationship between subjective socioeconomic status and laboratory pain

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(252) Characterization of pain, disability, and psychological burden in Marfan Syndrome

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Racial bias in pain perception and response: experimental examination of automatic and deliberate processes.

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(242) Situational, dispositional and disease-specific catastrophizing in sickle cell disease

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Cultural conceptions of Women's labor pain and labor pain management: A mixed-method analysis.

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Androgens in women with anorexia nervosa and normal-weight women with hypothalamic amenorrhea.

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Neural basis of preference for human social hierarchy versus egalitarianism.

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Making Pain Research More Inclusive: Why and How.

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Androgens in Women With Anorexia Nervosa and Normal-Weight Women With Hypothalamic Amenorrhea

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Leveraging insights from the psychological science of gender stereotyping to advance scholarship on gender-diverse individuals' pain experiences.

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Discrimination Experienced by Latinx American College Students is Associated with Enhanced Temporal Summation of Pain

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(244) Discrimination in health care settings is associated with greater clinical and laboratory pain in sickle cell disease

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(446) Recent opioid use is specifically associated with greater thermal temporal summation in sickle cell disease patients

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Trajectories of pain during pregnancy predict symptoms of postpartum depression.

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Shame Mediates the Relationship Between Pain Invalidation and Depression.

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Cultural modulation of the neural correlates of emotional pain perception: the role of other-focusedness.

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The social context of burning mouth syndrome: an exploratory pilot study of stigma, discrimination, and pain.

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Greater mechanical temporal summation of pain in Latinx-Americans and the role of adverse life experiences.

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Altered cognition-related brain activity and interactions with acute pain in migraine.

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Gender discrimination is associated with greater chronic pain interference among women.

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Cultural Neuroscience of Pain and Empathy

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Social Mechanisms of Psychophysical Pain Disparities

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Multiple Levels of Suffering: Discrimination in Health-Care Settings is Associated With Enhanced Laboratory Pain Sensitivity in Sickle Cell Disease.

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Sociocultural Context and Pre-Clinical Pain Facilitation: Multiple Dimensions of Racialized Discrimination Experienced by Latinx Americans are Associated With Enhanced Temporal Summation of Pain.

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Acute Ostracism-Related Pain Sensitization in the Context of Accumulated Lifetime Experiences of Ostracism.

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Independent effects of perceiver race on pain perception and empathy

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Mechanisms of injustice: what we (do not) know about racialized disparities in pain.

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Daily Fluctuations In Feelings Of State Shame Are Associated With Greater Daily Pain Severity And Interference

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Motivational salience guides attention to valuable and threatening stimuli: Evidence from behaviour and fMRI

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Confronting Racism in All Forms of Pain Research: A Shared Commitment for Engagement, Diversity, and Dissemination.

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The influence of Latinx American identity on pain perception and treatment seeking.

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Characterization of pain, disability, and psychological burden in Marfan syndrome.

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Enhanced Suprathreshold Heat Pain Sensitivity in Healthy Hispanic Relative to Non-Hispanic White Adults: A Preliminary Examination

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Disparities in Laboratory Pain amongst Latinx- and White-Americans

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Over-Rating Pain is Overrated: A Fundamental Self-Other Bias in Pain Reporting Behavior.

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Higher Self-perceived Stress Reactivity Is Associated with Increased Odds for the Development of Chronic Pain

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Neural Mechanisms of Attentional Bias Following Aversive Conditioning

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Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO)

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Confronting Racism in Pain Research: A Call to Action.

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Traumatic Life Experience and Pain Sensitization: Meta-analysis of Laboratory Findings.

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(141) Behavioral threat-avoidance is associated lower heat-pain thresholds in healthy volunteers

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Changes in pain catastrophizing predict later changes in fibromyalgia clinical and experimental pain report: cross-lagged panel analyses of dispositional and situational catastrophizing.

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(230) Ethnic identity attitudes and pain sensitivity in sickle cell disease

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High Frequency Migraine Is Associated with Lower Acute Pain Sensitivity and Abnormal Insula Activity Related to Migraine Pain Intensity, Attack Frequency, and Pain Catastrophizing

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Higher self-perceived stress reactivity is associated with increased chronic pain risk.

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Is Social Status Linked to Pain Sensitivity Responses for Latinx-Americans? The Role of Social Mobility

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Racial differences in neural response to the acute pain of other people

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Intergroup empathy: how does race affect empathic neural responses?

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Daily, but not lifetime discrimination is associated with greater pain interference in those with chronic pain

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A central mechanism enhances pain perception of noxious thermal stimulus changes.

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Lifetime ostracism experiences and mechanisms of pain.

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(311) Optimism is associated with decreased bilateral anterior insula activity during a conditioned pain modulation paradigm

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How and Why Patient Concerns Influence Pain Reporting: A Qualitative Analysis of Personal Accounts and Perceptions of Others' Use of Numerical Pain Scales.

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The effects of implicit racial priming on the relationship between trust and empathy for pain

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Hormonal and nutritional effects on cardiovascular risk markers in young women.

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Antiracism CoaliTION in Pain Research (ACTION-PR): Guiding Principles for Equity in Reporting.

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Overlapping neural response to the pain or harm of people, animals, and nature.

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Altered Brain Structure and Function Correlate with Disease Severity and Pain Catastrophizing in Migraine Patients.

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Racial identification modulates default network activity for same and other races.

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Disease-Related, Nondisease-Related, and Situational Catastrophizing in Sickle Cell Disease and Its Relationship With Pain.

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Motivational Salience Guides Attention to Valuable and Threatening Stimuli: Evidence from Behavior and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

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(226) Ethnic differences in Interleukin 6 and Neuropeptide Y response to capsaicin in healthy participants

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Neural basis of extraordinary empathy and altruistic motivation.

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Cultural influences on neural basis of intergroup empathy.

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Meaning in Life and Pain: The Differential Effects of Coherence, Purpose, and Mattering on Pain Severity, Frequency, and the Development of Chronic Pain.

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Experiencing Pain Invalidation is Associated with Under-Reporting of Pain: A Social Psychological Perspective on Acute Pain Communication.

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Confronting Racism in All Forms of Pain Research: Reframing Study Designs.

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Components of Selection History and the Control of Attention

# researcherOn[].awardedBy.label
National Institute on Drug Abuse - (Bethesda, Maryland, United States)

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DHHS-NIH-National Institute On Drug Abuse

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Collaborative Research. The Texas A&M System AGEP Alliance: A Model to Advance Historically Underrepresented Minorities in the STEM Professoriate

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National Science Foundation - (Arlington, Virginia, United States)

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Texas A&M University; Psychology; 4235 TAMU

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Nanavaty, Namrata (2018-12). Exposure to Threatening Environments, Threat-Related Attention Bias, and Pain. Master's Thesis.