Welcome!
The Shirvalkar Lab (Pain Neuromodulation Lab) is led by Prasad Shirvalkar MD, PhD, a neurologist and pain physician-scientist who treats the full range of chronic pain syndromes.
Among the amazing things that the brain does, it is responsible for generating and representing the most fundamental human percept: Pain. We focus on studying basic brain mechanisms of acute and chronic pain in humans using neuropsychology, behavior, imaging (DTI, fMRI), neurophysiology (invasive recordings and EEG), computational neuroscience, signal processing and machine learning. Our short term goal is to understand of how pain circuits live in the brain and how these circuits go awry to produce chronic pain states. The long term goal is to use this new knowledge to develop new technology for spine and brain stimulation to treat patients, and improve quality of life.
Our lab is physically located across three campuses: Parnassus, Mount Zion and Mission Bay. We collaborate with critical partners in anesthesiology, neurology and neurological surgery to tackle these urgent problems. We are always looking for enthusiastic and accomplished people to join us. Welcome!
Lab news update: 6/1/2023
See our latest publication on decoding human chronic pain in the brain here:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-023-01338-z
Media links about the publication:
NYT: Scientists Find Brain Signals of Chronic Pain
WSJ: Brain Study Finds Clues to Treating Chronic Pain
New Scientist: Chronic pain linked to distinctive patterns of brain activity
Science Friday https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/chronic-pain-brain-signals/#segment-transcript