Jennifer Pierce

(Dr)

Expertise

I am a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Michigan. As a social and health psychologist, I study the association between adversity/trauma and physical pain, particularly nociplastic or centralized pain.

During my postdoctoral work, it became apparent that these separate fields recognize the importance of exteroceptive and interoceptive sensory sensitivity to trauma sequelae and a nociplastic pain phenotype, although the language and context differs.

I aim to bridge this gap utilizing both self-report and experimental sensory sensitivity measures and nesting the research within well-established theories regarding sensitivity, including Environmental Sensitivity theory.