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SPOTLIGHT ON BBRB GRANTEES
Dr. Sonia Ancoli-Israel, professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the School of Medicine, University of California at San Diego, director of the Sleep Disorders Clinic at the San Diego Veterans Administration Medical Center, and president-elect of the Sleep Research Society, received R01 funding for her project, Fatigue, Sleep and Circadian Rhythms in Breast Cancer. After completing her Ph.D. in psychology at the University of California at San Francisco in 1979, Dr. Ancoli-Israel began her research on sleep disorders at the San Diego Veterans Administration Medical Center, eventually becoming director of the Sleep Disorders Clinic in 1992. She has published widely on the biobehavioral aspects of sleep, and sleep disturbances in the elderly. Her work has appeared in such journals as JAMA, Chest, Sleep, and the Journal of the American Geriatric Society. In addition to her current NCI-funded grant, Dr. Ancoli-Israel is principal investigator on a National Institute on Aging grant, Cognitive Benefits of Treating Sleep Apnea in Dementia, and co-investigator on three other NIH-funded grants. She has received numerous awards and honors during her distinguished career. Most recently she was recognized in Who's Who in America and Who's Who in Science and Engineering.
Dr. Ancoli-Israel's NCI-funded project seeks to understand the relationship between fatigue, circadian rhythms, and sleep in women with breast cancer. The aims of her study are: (1) to examine the relationship between daytime fatigue and sleep/wake cycles; (2) to examine the effect of chemotherapy on sleep/wake rhythms and quality of sleep; (3) to examine whether sleep/wake rhythms influence a patient's treatment tolerance; and (4) to evaluate the relationship between light exposure and circadian rhythms. To accomplish these aims, 120 women with breast cancer will be evaluated for 72-hour periods each week of cycle one and cycle four of treatment. Information on sleep quality and quantity, circadian rhythms, and fatigue will be obtained using polysomnography, Actillume recordings, and self-report instruments. It is hypothesized that chemotherapy will desynchronize sleep/wake cycles, and that women who have desynchronized sleep/wake rhythms prior to treatment will report more fatigue and poorer quality of life than women whose rhythms were synchronized before treatment. If women with synchronized rhythms demonstrate better tolerance to chemotherapy, then interventions to improve synchronization could be implemented.
Dr. Arthur A. Stone, professor and vice-chair of the Psychiatry Department and director of the Applied Behavioral Medicine Research Institute at Stony Brook University, received R01 funding for his project, The Utility of Momentary Versus Recalled Self-Reports. After completing his doctoral work in clinical psychology at SUNY at Stony Brook in 1978, Dr. Stone joined the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology in the medical school at Stony Brook. His early work grew out of dissatisfaction with major life event approaches to assessing environmental stress, and led to research on the influence of daily events, coping, and mood in the genesis of respiratory symptoms. Dr. Stone's recent work has focused on understanding the interplay between environmental influences and physiological processes, particularly those related to the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. He has been involved with developing Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA), a technique for intensively monitoring individuals in their natural environments. Additionally, he is involved in developing novel psychosocial assessments and interventions for medical illnesses, including structured writing about traumatic events. Dr. Stone is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Society of Behavioral Medicine, and the American Psychosomatic Society, and an elected member of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research. In 1995 he received the Distinguished Health Psychologist - Senior Award from the American Psychological Association. Dr. Stone has served on the editorial boards of several scientific journals, including Health Psychology and the Annals of Behavioral Medicine. He was editor-in-chief of the Annals of Behavioral Medicine from 1998 to 2000, and is presently editor-in-chief of Health Psychology.
Dr. Stone's current NCI-funded study focuses on measuring pain and involves understanding the meaning of recalled pain experiences versus those same experiences captured with ecological momentary assessment, which avoids bias associated with recall by having participants record their immediate experiences (many times per day over the past week). The primary aims of the study are: (1) to understand how recalled self-reports of experiences relate to momentary self-reports, to individual personality characteristics, and to situational qualities present during recall and (2) to determine the relative utility of recalled summary self-reports and summaries based on momentary self-reports for predicting theoretically selected criterion measures. Results from this study will enhance our understanding of how people report their pain and the factors that influence those summaries. It is aimed at developing more reliable and valid pain assessments.
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