Vitaly Napadow is a Professor at Harvard Medical School and the Director of the Scott Schoen and Nancy Adams Discovery Center for Recovery from Chronic Pain at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital and the Director of the Center for Integrative Pain NeuroImaging (CiPNI)) at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital. Somatosensory, cognitive, and affective factors all influence the malleable experience of chronic pain, and Dr. Napadow’s Lab has applied human functional and structural neuroimaging to localize and suggest mechanisms by which different brain circuitries modulate pain perception. Dr. Napadow’s neuroimaging research also aims to better understand how non-pharmacological therapies, from acupuncture and transcutaneous neuromodulation to cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness meditation training, ameliorate aversive perceptual states such as pain. Dr. Napadow has more than 200 publications in leading peer-reviewed scientific journals, is past-President of the Society for Acupuncture Research, and serves on the board of the US Association for the Study of Pain (USASP) and numerous conference, journal, and NIH review panels. He was recently named to the Distinguished Investigator Council by the Academy for Radiology & Biomedical Imaging Research and received the Excellence in Integrative Medicine Research Award by the European Society for Integrative Medicine.
Education
PhD, MIT/HMS HST Medical Engineering and Medical Physics (MEMP) Program
Select Publications
1. Napadow V, LaCount L, Park K, As-Sanie S, Clauw DJ, Harris RE. Intrinsic brain connectivity in fibromyalgia is associated with chronic pain intensity. Arthritis Rheum. 2010 Aug;62(8):2545-55.
2. Lee J, Mawla I, Kim J, Loggia ML, Ortiz A, Jung C, Chan ST, Gerber J, Schmithorst VJ, Edwards RR, Wasan AD, Berna C, Kong J, Kaptchuk TJ, Gollub RL, Rosen BR, Napadow V. Machine learning-based prediction of clinical pain using multimodal neuroimaging and autonomic metrics. Pain. 2019 Mar;160(3):550-560.
3. Maeda Y, Kim H, Kettner N, Kim J, Cina S, Malatesta C, Gerber J, McManus C, Ong-Sutherland R, Mezzacappa P, Libby A, Mawla I, Morse LR, Kaptchuk TJ, Audette J, Napadow V. Rewiring the primary somatosensory cortex in carpal tunnel syndrome with acupuncture. Brain. 2017 Apr 1;140(4):914-927.
Highlights
Inventor on awarded and licensed patent: “Systems and methods for Respiratory-gated Auricular Vagal Afferent Nerve Stimulation (RAVANS)”
Co-President of the Society for Acupuncture Research for 8 years
PI of several NIH R01 grants and P01 program project grant titled “Boosting mind-body mechanisms and outcomes for chronic pain”
Websites
Napadow Lab
Center for Integrative Pain NeuroImaging (CIPNI)