Keith Vogt
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Neuroscience
Anesthetics and pain treatments are used every day, yet it is still not well understood how they change brain activity. This gap matters both in the operating room and for people living with chronic pain.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Medicine & Clinical Research
Pharmacology
- Topics
chronic low back pain
auriculotherapy
Cryo-AT
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Apr 2030
What they work on
- Test whether touching different ear points with von Frey filaments activates distinct regions of the somatosensory and prefrontal cortex in pain-free volunteers, measured with fNIRS, a light-based brain imaging method.
- Test whether the low-back ear point is oversensitive in chronic low back pain patients, and whether needle-free Cryo-AT reduces this response compared with sham in a double-blind crossover trial.
- Measure lasting changes in brain network connectivity after Cryo-AT using resting-state fMRI, and relate them to changes in pain, anxiety and depression.
- Find where propofol, dexmedetomidine, fentanyl, lidocaine and sevoflurane alter memory, fear conditioning and pain processing, using high-field fMRI with EEG in healthy volunteers.
- Test combinations of anesthetics from different drug classes for interacting effects on behavior and brain activity, to model the drug mixtures used in clinical practice.
More about the research
Both projects use brain imaging in human volunteers and patients to find where and how these treatments act.
Why it matters
Chronic low back pain affects millions of Americans and drives costly surgery, opioid use and poor mental health. Showing how ear-based auriculotherapy changes the brain could support wider use of this opioid-sparing option. Mapping how anesthetics and their combinations act in the brain could guide better dosing and monitoring during surgery. The goal is reliable amnesia and pain relief for patients under anesthesia.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
A mechanistic neuroimaging study to determine brain changes with auricular stimulation and auriculotherapy in healthy volunteers and chronic low back pain patients
NIH · May 2025 – Apr 2030
Neuroimaging to identify the neural correlates of anesthetic and analgesic action in humans
NIH · Sep 2022 – Aug 2027
Closest labs
Manish Jha
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, TX·Neuroscience·Early-career
Identify patterns of resting-state functional connectivity linked to irritability, using 7 Tesla fMRI in 30 healthy adults and 60 adults with major depressive disorder.
Paul Regier
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Neuroscience·Early-career
Compare executive-function scores and prefrontal cortex activity, measured with fNIRS (light-based brain imaging), between people with opioid use disorder and healthy controls.
Roxana Burciu
University of Delaware, DE·Neuroscience
Test whether people with Parkinson's disease show altered brain activity during isometric two-handed force tasks compared with healthy older adults, using functional MRI.
The school
University of Pittsburgh: 83 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 403 research doctorates a year.
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