Papers
20
Total Citations
390
H-Index
12
About
Catherine Mercier is a prominent rehabilitation neuroscientist whose work sits at the intersection of pain, motor learning, and sensorimotor integration. Based at Université Laval, her research has made significant contributions to understanding how pain interferes with the neural mechanisms underlying motor skill acquisition and retention. Her highly cited 2014 studies (74 and 48 citations respectively) demonstrated that tonic pain experienced during locomotor and upper limb training impairs motor memory consolidation, suggesting that nociception and sensorimotor plasticity compete for shared neural resources — a finding with profound implications for clinical rehabilitation practice. Mercier has also advanced understanding of sensorimotor conflict and body perception disturbances in chronic pain conditions such as complex regional pain syndrome and fibromyalgia, revealing how pain heightens sensory disturbances when motor and sensory signals become incongruent. Her methodological innovations are equally noteworthy, including the development of exoskeleton-based proprioception assessments and cable-driven robotic systems that enrich virtual rehabilitation environments with haptic feedback. Collectively, her work challenges clinicians to reconsider how pain is managed during rehabilitation and offers rigorous scientific tools for evaluating sensorimotor function, making her a leading voice in translational pain and rehabilitation research.
Research Focus
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