Sean C. Mackey

Title
Assistant Professor
Associate Director - Pain Management Division

Department
Anesthesia, Division of Pain Management

Research Interests
Functional Neuroimaging of Pain

Email
smackey@pain.stanford.edu

Phone
(650)498-6477

Fax
(650)725-9642

Address
780 Welch Road
Suite 208F
Palo Alto, CA  94305

http://paincenter.stanford.edu

Faculty Research Description
Chronic pain is a problem that affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide and costs in excess of $200 billion dollars per year in direct and indirect expenditures in this country alone. My research is aimed at utilizing the specialized neuroimaging  facilities at Stanford to investigate the processing of pain in the brain and spinal cord  to better understand its cause and devise better treatments.  Specifically, I am focusing on utilizing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), to investigate how pain is processed and perceived in healthy volunteers, particularly in limbic forebrain structures, and the neural plastic changes that occur in patients with chronic pain. Current projects include:

fMRI of the sensory and limbic structures of the brain to investigate plasticity changes in patients with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) specifically in somatosensory cortex.  Additionally, I am investigating dysfunction in pain attention circuitry in these patients fMRI of the human spinal cord and brainstem, its response to noxious stimuli and secondary hyperalgesia

Real time fMRI guided control of pain perception and treatment for chronic pain

Use of neurotoxins for sympathetically maintained pain and other neuropathic pain states

Development and establishment of validated chronic pain outcome tools