School of Medicine
Showing 21-30 of 52 Results
-
Audrey Shafer
Professor of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine, Emeritum
Current Research and Scholarly Interestsliterature and medicine, humanistic aspects of medicine and anesthesia care, language and medicine, communication, medical humanities, creative writing, arts and healthcare
-
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.
-
Vanila M. Singh, MD MACM
Clinical Associate Professor, Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine
BioDr Singh is the immediate past Chief Medical Officer in the US Department of Health and Human Services and was Chairperson of the highly regarded HHS Task Force in conjunction with the Department of Defense and the Veterans Affairs. She led this group to the comprehensive and approachable final report submitted to Congress. She is a clinical associate professor of Anesthesiology, Pain and Peri-operative Medicine at Stanford and is a teaching mentor at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Pain Management Best Practices HHS Task Force Report: https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/pain-mgmt-best-practices-draft-final-report-05062019.pdf
The Best Practices Pain Inter-agency report that was convened by US Department of HHS in conjunction with Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration is supported by over 160 organizations including the Human Rights Watch, dozens of patient advocacy groups, respected medical organizations including AMA, AAOS, AAPS, ASA, CMA, ASIPP, AAPM, ACOG, CSNS, and dozens of others and key stakeholders such as nursing, social workers, integrative health primary physicians pharmacists and others. There were over 10,000 public comments highlighting the challenges that forced tapering of opioids and the abandonment of chronic pain patients across the nation. The significant patient harms have been a topic of concern with the resulting number of suicides and adverse clinical outcomes pushing patients to the medically unsupervised black market.
Dr Singh has a background in molecular and cell biology, economics, pain medicine, and regional anesthesia with a forte in advanced ultrasound guided procedures for pain and anesthesia medicine. She is double board-certified in pain and anesthesiology. She has served in medical ethics, and to served on scientific editorial boards, committees for the American Society of Regional Anesthesia, American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians, California Medical Association, and the Santa Clara County Medical Association . She has an interest & remains involved in health policy with a background in economics. Dr Singh has been invited and has spoken extensively around the country about the opioid crisis and pain management as well as the growing illicit drug crisis afflicting the nation. Dr Singh's practice uniquely focuses on regional anesthesia and peri-operative, subacute, and the development of chronic pain, with an appreciation on complimentary and traditional medicine approaches that emphasizes an individualized patient-centered approach. She has interests that include public health, persistent pain following surgical procedures, and long term chronic and complex pain issues. Dr. Singh has a background and interest in education for medical students, residents, and fellows. She has identified the growing clinical administrative burden of physicians as a challenge to good patient care, and has spoken about EHR and health IT in general. She strongly believes in a compassionate, individualized patient-centered approach to medicine. She completed a masters in academic medicine as part of her professional development to further enhance leadership, educational curriculum development, interdisciplinary work and various presentations and projects with faculty from around the country.
