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Michel-Pierre Coll

Ph.D. (doctor),  Regular member
Expertise
Neuroscience
Principal Interest
Cerebral imaging
Secondary Interest
Low back pain
Primary Affiliation

Université Laval

Secondary Affiliation
Centre interdisciplinaire de recherche en réadaptation et intégration sociale (CIRRIS)

Biography

Michel-Pierre Coll is a cognitive neuroscientist and neuropsychologist specializing in the cognitive and affective mechanisms of pain. His research aims to understand the behavioural and neural mechanisms underlying pain perception and modulation in health and disease.
During his postdoctoral training (2016–2021) at the University of Oxford and McGill University, he developed expertise in pain imaging, computational modeling, and machine learning. He is an associate professor at Université Laval and a researcher at the Centre interdisciplinaire de recherche en réadaptation et intégration sociale (CIRRIS). His lab combines neuroimaging techniques (EEG, fMRI) with computational modeling and machine learning to study how learning and valuation processes modulate acute and chronic pain, and to develop predictive models of pain from neural data. This work spans both healthy individuals and clinical populations, with the broader goal of identifying the mechanisms that shape pain perception in health and disease.

Why did you choose to study pain management?
My interest in pain stems from a fascination with one of the most complex and universal phenomena of human experience. Pain is essential: it protects us, signals danger, and shapes our learning and behavior, in both humans and animals. But this same experience, when it persists or becomes dysregulated, becomes a major source of suffering and one of the greatest global health burdens. It is this duality that has captivated me: understanding how a mechanism so fundamental to our survival can also cause so much distress. Studying pain means exploring the intersection of body and mind, of neural, cognitive, and emotional processes. By seeking to understand how pain is perceived and modulated, I hope to help transform this knowledge into concrete ways to bring relief to those who suffer from it.