Khairunisa Ibrahim, PhD

I first entered the pain research field in my final undergraduate year when I did Honours’ project under Dr. Sanjay Khanna at National University of Singapore. It was then that my interest in the subject developed and I embarked on my PhD journey in the same lab. My PhD work looked at the role of AMPA receptor-mediated glutamatergic network in the medial septum (MS), in modulating the hippocampal theta wave activity. The project was further developed to understand how perturbing the AMPA receptors in the MS modulates both the acute pain and chronic pain using the formalin test and chronic constriction injury model, respectively.

Moving forward in Dr. Jose Moron-Concepcion’s lab, I will start out with a longitudinal study looking at the changes in the excitability of the hippocampus in the presence of chronic pain using various models and how that might affect its connections with the nucleus accumbens, which is important in the reward system. This is in hope that it will provide some insights on how chronic pain-induced changes in the hippocampal might influence or alter drug addiction.

Outside of the lab, I love spending time with my family, exploring new places, baking and having some quiet time to read a good novel.