University of Rochester Sleep & Neurophysiology Research Laboratory

About Us

Laboratory Assistant Director
    Wilfred Pigeon Ph.D.
             

Dr Pigeon is a licensed clinical psychologist who received his doctoral degree from the Union Institute and completed his internship, dissertation and post-doctoral fellowship at Dartmouth Medical School jointly in the Behavioral Medicine Section and the Sleep Disorders Center. He joined the University of Rochester on an F32 NRSA Fellowship in 2004 and serves as Assistant Director of the Sleep & Neurophysiology Lab. 

His insomnia research focuses on specific: causes (sleep homeostasis abnormalities and hyperarousal), consequences (depression, general medical morbidity, peripheral and neuroimmune alterations), treatments (CBT approaches for comorbid insomnias (esp. in depression, trauma/PTSD, and chronic pain and novel agents with the potential to alter immune pathways), and outcomes (how treatments affect not only insomnia, but putative causes, co-morbid conditions, general health status, and immune function). 

Dr. Pigeon’s F32 study assesses the cognitive behavioral treatment (CBT) of co-morbid insomnia and chronic pain. Dr. Pigeon received pilot funding from the Rochester Center for Mind Body Research to add blood draws and cytokine immunoassays to his F32 study across four time points. Dr. Pigeon received a Career Advancement Award from the American Sleep Medicine Foundation in 2005 to conduct a two year study assessing both sleep homeostasis (via recovery sleep and power spectral EEG analysis) and hyperarousal (via hear rate variability analysis and diurnal salivary cortisol) following a sleep deprivation challenge before and after CBT for insomnia. 

Most recently (2007), he received a small investigator-initiated grant to asses the effects of a tart cherry juice extract, which has naturally occurring melatonin and anti-inflammatory properties, on the sleep of elderly patients with primary insomnia. 

Much of Dr. Pigeon’s current and pending insomnia research have common foci: operationally defined immunocompetence that is likely to be directly related to health outcomes, multi-method approaches that assess related factors while answering theoretical questions, and methodological strategies for replicating the findings in other insomnia populations (as well as in other types of disorders) and with a variety of intervention types. 

Dr. Pigeon has served as a member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s (AASM) Behavioral Sleep Medicine (BSM) Committee and currently chairs that committee; he carries the AASM certification in BSM. He is also a native of Vermont who now raises chickens in his small back yard.