Faculty Profiles

Faculty & Staff, Div. I

Faculty & Staff, Div. II

Faculty & Staff, Div. III

School of Nursing Faculty

Janean Holden
Associate Professor
Division of Acute, Critical, and Long Term Care

University of Michigan School of Nursing
400 North Ingalls Building
Room 2158
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0482
Telephone: (734) 763-7667
holdenje@umich.edu

Research Interests
Pain
Pain Modulation

Dr. Janean Holden’s research focuses on understanding how the body processes and modifies pain. Her work on the role of the hypothalamus in pain modulation has been widely published in neuroscience journals and she is recognized internationally as an expert in the field of basic pain research.

Her current project, supported by the NIH, investigates how the lateral hypothalamus modifies acute and chronic pain in the spinal cord in males and females.  The spinal cord receives both pain stimuli from the periphery and input from the brain and is a key site for pain reliving interventions.   In a separate study funded by the Neuroscience Nurses Association, Dr. Holden will investigate the role of the posterior hypothalamus in chemotherapy induced pain.  Both of these studies, which examine receptor function in a whole animal model, have implications for clinical treatment and alleviation of distinct pain types in women and men.