Patrick H. Finan, PhD, is a member of the Faculty Research Council at the Contemplative Sciences Center. He is the Harold Carron Professor of Anesthesiology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He is a clinical pain psychologist and an expert in cognitive, behavioral, and affective mechanisms and treatments for chronic pain.

He has an active NIH-funded research program that utilizes laboratory (e.g. experimental sleep disruption; quantitative sensory testing; fMRI), ambulatory (e.g. actigraphy; EEG; ecological momentary assessment), and psychotherapeutic intervention (e.g. meditation; cognitive-behavioral therapy) methodologies to probe mechanisms related to chronic pain. Dr. Finan is an Associate Editor for PAIN and is actively involved in committees for the United States Association for the Study of Pain, the International Association for the Study of Pain, and the Winter Conference on Brain Research.

Dr. Finan’s research interests include the biobehavioral features of emotion regulation in individuals with chronic pain. A major focus of his  research to date has centered on the measurement and analysis of dynamic measures of pain and emotion captured in the course of daily life. We employ laboratory tools, such as quantitative sensory testing and sleep deprivation, to investigate the reproducibility of information gathered in daily life. We are currently developing behavioral (e.g., sleep behaviors) and neurobiological (e.g., dopaminergic neurotransmission) models to understand the influence of positive emotion and reward processing on pain sensitivity and coping with chronic pain. In the long term, our aim is to improve treatment options for individuals with chronic pain, including those with comorbid substance use disorders.