Dr. Tasha Stanton is a physiotherapist and a clinical scientist. After completing her PhD at the University of Sydney, she did post-doctoral work under the mentorship of professor Lorimer Moseley. She now leads her own research group as a senior research fellow at the University of South Australia Adelaide, studying perception, multisensory integration, cortical body representation, and pain.
I've been following Tasha's work for at least seven years, especially her studies where she uses perceptual illusions to modulate the perception in pain. These are very fun studies with cool effects that really get you thinking. In one of them, people with knee pain get a knee massage while viewing their knee through a device that makes it look like its being stretched. This reduces pain. In another study, people with stiff backs listen to the sound of a creaky door when their back is being pushed on.
We talked about these studies and used them as a base to jump off into all sorts of discussions about perception, reality, and other body mind issues. It was a very fun conversation!
Links
Tasha’s website
Tasha on Twitter
List of published research
Tasha Stanton on Pain and Illusion