Maria Fitzgerald

This study maps the postnatal development of brain networks for pain processing in infants, showing differential maturation of sensory, affective, and cognitive pain subnetworks.

This study shows that microglia phagocytose A-fibre terminals in the spinal cord dorsal horn during postnatal development, and their absence leads to hypersensitivity to dynamic touch.

This study shows that early life pain exposure in rats increases functional connectivity in the somatosensory and medial prefrontal cortex, correlating with heightened pain hypersensitivity in adulthood.

The paper shows that newborn infants have widespread nociceptive maps in the somatosensory cortex, aligning with their disorganised pain behaviour.

This study investigates how term and preterm infants adapt to repeated noxious stimuli using EEG, finding that preterm infants lack the ability to update predictions for pain adaptation.