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Nnamdi Orakpo, MD, PhD

Clinical Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences - Sleep Medicine

BioNnamdi Orakpo's path to becoming a bilingual Sleep Medicine Psychiatrist & Interventional Psychiatrist was far from conventional. Originally, he was focused on a professional basketball career in Australia and New Zealand. However, his father's guidance led him to pursue higher education.

At the University of North Texas, Dr. Orakpo completed a doctorate in Gerontology before attending medical school in Mexico and completing his residency in Psychiatry at Garnet Health Medical Center in New York. He graduated from Sleep Medicine fellowship training at Stanford University, Department of Psychiatry, Division of Sleep Medicine in Sleep Medicine (2023), where he is currently serving as a Clinical Assistant Professor.

Dr. Orakpo has published numerous articles in SLEEP, Frontiers Journal of Psychiatry, Frontiers Journal of Human Neuroscience, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, and has collaborated with Stanford University colleagues on a textbook on clinical sleep medicine, where he authored the chapters on chronic insomnia, isolated sleep paralysis, sleep enuresis, sleep related eating disorder, sexsomnia, and exploding head syndrome. His research and clinical practice have centered around Sleep Medicine and Sleep Psychiatry. He conducted a pioneering study on using Virtual Reality Neurofeedback as a treatment for chronic pain and insomnia. This work was supported by an institutional grant and has contributed to the field of sleep medicine.

Beyond his clinical work, Dr. Orakpo is an active researcher and educator. He recently published and co-authored commentary in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine on pharmacological management of sleep apnea and obesity with GLP-1 medications. He is also a member of several professional organizations, including the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the California Sleep Society, World Sleep Society, and the Nigerian Sleep Society.

Contact Info
- 450 Broadway St # 2
- Redwood City, California 94063-3132
Mail Code: 5704
- (650) 723-6601 (office)
norakpo@stanford.edu

Other Names:

Nnamdi Orakpo

Dr. Nnamdi Orakpo

Sergiu P. Pasca

Kenneth T. Norris, Jr. Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Bonnie Uytengsu and Family Director of the Stanford Brain Organogenesis Program

Current Research and Scholarly InterestsA critical challenge in understanding the intricate programs underlying development, assembly and dysfunction of the human brain is the lack of direct access to intact, functioning human brain tissue for detailed investigation by imaging, recording, and stimulation.
To address this, we are developing bottom-up approaches to generate and assemble, from multi-cellular components, human neural circuits in vitro and in vivo.
We introduced the use of instructive signals for deriving from human pluripotent stem cells self-organizing 3D cellular structures named brain region-specific spheroids/organoids. We demonstrated that these cultures, such as the ones resembling the cerebral cortex, can be reliably derived across many lines and experiments, contain synaptically connected neurons and non-reactive astrocytes, and can be used to gain mechanistic insights into genetic and environmental brain disorders. Moreover, when maintained as long-term cultures, they recapitulate an intrinsic program of maturation that progresses towards postnatal stages.
We also pioneered a modular system to integrate 3D brain region-specific organoids and study human neuronal migration and neural circuit formation in functional preparations that we named assembloids. We have actively applied these models in combination with studies in long-term ex vivo brain preparations to acquire a deeper understanding of human physiology, evolution and disease mechanisms.
We have carved a unique research program that combines rigorous in vivo and in vitro neuroscience, stem cell and molecular biology approaches to construct and deconstruct previously inaccessible stages of human brain development and function in health and disease.
We believe science is a community effort, and accordingly, we have been advancing the field by broadly and openly sharing our technologies with numerous laboratories around the world and organizing the primary research conference and the training courses in the area of cellular models of the human brain.