School of Medicine
Showing 21-30 of 59 Results
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Pilleriin Sikka
Postdoctoral Scholar, Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI strive to understand the phenomenology, dynamics, mechanisms, and impact of subjective experiences that occur across different states of consciousness—from wakefulness to normal sleep and dreaming, to anesthesia dreaming, and to psychedelic experiences. As part of my doctoral research, conducted under the mentorship of Prof. Antti Revonsuo, I investigated the conceptual and methodological challenges in the study of dream experiences, the neural correlates of these experiences, and how dreaming is associated with waking well-being. In 2021, I joined Stanford University as a Postdoctoral Scholar, initially working at the Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory under the mentorship of James J. Gross. In this role, I expanded my research to explore emotions and emotion regulation across the wake-sleep cycle and to study an oft-overlooked aspect of well-being--peace of mind. Since November 2023, I have been a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine, where, under the mentorship of Dr. Boris Heifets, I am investigating transformative experiences, specifically, the mechanisms and therapeutic potential of anesthesia-induced dream states and psychedelic experiences.
Leveraging my unique multidisciplinary background, my goal is to bridge the fields of consciousness research, sleep and dream research, emotion research, and well-being research and draw upon the concepts, theories, and methods from psychology, neuroscience, and (molecular) biology. To this end, I have experience in using diverse methods, including self-reports (development, validation, and use of questionnaires), interviews, ecological momentary assessment (EMA/ESM; diaries), behavioural experiments, natural language processing, sleep monitoring techniques, and electrophysiological (EEG/ERP) recordings, combined with qualitative and quantitative data analysis.
With an overarching goal of conducting research with societal impact, I aspire to: (1) develop innovative diagnostic and prognostic markers of mental health and well-being, and (2) to devise and test interventions scalable for enhancing the mental and physical well-being of communities. -
Laura Simons
Professor of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine (Pediatric)
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI am a Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative, and Pain Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and a clinical psychologist who evaluates and treats youth presenting with chronic pain in the Pediatric Pain Management Clinic (PPMC) at Stanford Children’s Health. My program of research aims to utilize a pain neuroscience psychology approach to gain a mechanistic understanding of cognitive and affective processes in pediatric pain, perform rigorous patient-oriented research that translates targeted assessment into mechanistically informed treatment approaches for optimal clinical care and leverage the ubiquity of digital health to enhance patient access and reach. Central to these goals are projects targeting adolescence and youth adults with chronic pain that encompass defining brain signatures of threat interpretation, evaluating the efficacy of graded exposure (NCT03699007), deriving a biosignature of improvement vs. persistence of pain and disability (NCT04285112), and evaluating the impact of virtual reality on pain rehabilitation (NCT04636177). These studies along with additional work examining the journey of pain care for youth with pain and their parents form a comprehensive research portfolio in the realm of understanding and treating chronic pain in young people. My long-term career goal is to lead a robust research program focusing on alleviating the suffering of youth and emerging adults with chronic pain.