Welcome Dr. Damien Boorman

We would like to welcome Dr. Damien Boorman, to the CPIN Program. Dr. Boorman is a CIHR Postdoctoral Fellow in the Martin Pain Lab at the University of Toronto Mississauga, where his research focuses on the neurobiology of chronic pain, with a particular interest in placebo and nocebo effects. His work aims to understand how expectations and context shape pain and physiology, sitting at the intersection of brain, body, and psychology. Dr. Boorman completed his PhD at the University of Sydney in the Lab of Neural Structure and Function, where he developed novel preclinical models of placebo analgesia in the context of chronic pain. His current research combines whole-brain activity mapping, functional connectivity, and cross-species approaches to identify neural circuits underlying placebo and nocebo responses, with an emphasis on translation between animal models and humans. Alongside his academic work, Dr. Boorman is the founder of NeuroBriefer, a free platform designed to help researchers keep up with the rapidly expanding neuroscience literature. The platform curates and ranks newly published papers based on user interests and enables collaborative discussion through shared collections. His broader goal is to better understand the neural mechanisms of pain and leverage this knowledge to inform more effective and personalized approaches to treatment.