School of Medicine
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Pilleriin Sikka
Postdoctoral Scholar, Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine
Basic Life Research Scientist, Multispecialty AnesthesiologyCurrent Research and Scholarly InterestsWhat makes certain experiences transformative, and how can we harness them to support resilience and mental health? I explore this question by studying affective experiences across various states of consciousness—waking, dreaming, anesthesia, psychedelics, and meditation. With a background in psychology, neuroscience, and anesthesiology, I bring together methods that are rarely combined: daily diaries and surveys, language and narrative analysis, neurophysiological recordings, lab experiments, and clinical trials. My work has three main aims: (1) to understand how affective experiences unfold across states; (2) to test whether these experiences can be deliberately shaped to support mental health; and (3) to identify the mechanisms that make them transformative. This interdisciplinary approach has led to the first controlled studies of anesthesia-induced dreams for trauma, new insights into peace of mind and emotion regulation, and cross-state comparisons showing how affective experiences in altered states can foster resilience. My long-term goal is to develop a new frontier in affective science: the study of how transformative experiences across different states of mind can improve well-being.
