Congratulations to Keith M. Vogt, MD, PhD, who was awarded a FAER Mentored Research Training Grant for his project, “Human Memory Encoding Under Anesthesia: How Pain Affects Hippocampal and Amygdalar Contributions to Memory.”
Dr. Vogt’s research aims to determine the degree to which subjects form explicit and implicit memories while experiencing pain during minimal sedation with the two common anesthetics midazolam and ketamine. The effects of these agents will be examined in healthy young adult subjects who will provide behavioral, neuroimaging, and physiologic measures of memory formation. The drugs are expected to semi-selectively inhibit the hippocampus (both midazolam and ketamine) and the amygdala (ketamine). Contrasting these effects will reveal the contributions of these key brain structures in forming implicit memory for items experienced with pain compared to those items not paired with pain. This will provide insight into how the brain encodes information during a painful experience when consciousness is altered by anesthetics. Next steps after completion of this project include testing how implicit memory is modulated by other common anesthetics and moving towards clinically relevant doses and anesthetic combinations. The long-term objective of Dr. Vogt’s project is to broadly understand pain’s effect on implicit memory in these settings and gain insight into the genesis of psychiatric disorders that arise from unpleasant memories formed during an experience over which a susceptible individual has limited control.