Congratulations to Keith M. Vogt, MD, PhD, who has received a K23 research award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for his project “Anesthetic Modulation of Human Memory During Acute Pain.” NIH K23 awards support the career development of individuals with clinical doctoral degrees, the potential to develop into productive clinical investigators, and a commitment to focusing on patient-oriented research. Dr. Vogt has already been on track towards becoming an outstanding physician scientist, having completed a T32 Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and receiving a Mentored Research Training Grant from the Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research.
Memories formed during painful conditions can lead to later psychological problems, such as anxiety. For his newly-funded project, Dr. Vogt will use multidisciplinary research techniques from the fields of behavioral psychology, neuroimaging, and anesthetic pharmacology to investigate how three anesthetics affect the formation of conscious and subconscious memories during experimental painful stimulation. The project’s scientific framework can be directly applied to better understanding the impact of memories formed during sedation with anesthetics while experiencing noxious stimuli. Further extension of his work to other cognitive neuroscience paradigms could provide a multidisciplinary framework for basic studies of memory formation, the genesis of dysregulated memories, and the conditions necessary for anesthetic-induced amnesia.