Emery N Brown
· Associate Director IMES/Taplin ProfessorMassachusetts Institute of Technology · Psychology
Active 1988–2026
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About
Emery N. Brown is the Edward Hood Professor of Medical Engineering and Computational Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Warren M. Zapol Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School, and a practicing anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. He holds a B.A. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard College, an M.A. and Ph.D. in statistics from Harvard University, and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School. Dr. Brown is an anesthesiologist-statistician whose experimental research has significantly contributed to understanding how anesthetics act in the brain to induce general anesthesia. His work involves developing signal processing algorithms to analyze neuroscience data, characterizing neural representations during learning, and understanding the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying anesthesia. His research employs systems neuroscience approaches using fMRI, EEG, neurophysiological recordings, and mathematical modeling in interdisciplinary collaborations. Dr. Brown's long-term goal is to establish a neurophysiological definition of anesthesia, develop safer anesthetic drugs, and improve methods for measuring anesthesia depth. He has served on various NIH and NSF advisory committees and is a member of prestigious organizations including the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Engineering.
Research topics
- Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Medicine
- Computer Science
- Internal medicine
- Anesthesia
- Sociology
- Political Science
- Biology
- Acoustics
Selected publications
Neural effects of propofol-induced unconsciousness and its reversal using thalamic stimulation
eLife · 2021 · 169 citations
The specific circuit mechanisms through which anesthetics induce unconsciousness have not been completely characterized. We recorded neural activity from the frontal, parietal, and temporal cortices and thalamus while maintaining unconsciousness in non-human primates (NHPs) with the anesthetic propofol. Unconsciousness was marked by slow frequency (~1 Hz) oscillations in local field potentials, entrainment of local spiking to Up states alternating with Down states of little or no spiking activit…
Anesthesia & Analgesia · 2020 · 108 citations
BACKGROUND: A number of recent studies have reported an association between intraoperative burst suppression and postoperative delirium. These studies suggest that anesthesia-induced burst suppression may be an indicator of underlying brain vulnerability. A prominent feature of electroencephalogram (EEG) under propofol and sevoflurane anesthesia is the frontal alpha oscillation. This frontal alpha oscillation is known to decline significantly during aging and is generated by prefrontal brain reg…
Nature Communications · 2021 · 73 citations
It is long hypothesized that there is a reliable, specific mapping between certain emotional states and the facial movements that express those states. This hypothesis is often tested by asking untrained participants to pose the facial movements they believe they use to express emotions during generic scenarios. Here, we test this hypothesis using, as stimuli, photographs of facial configurations posed by professional actors in response to contextually-rich scenarios. The scenarios portrayed in…
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2023 · 52 citations
During propofol-induced general anesthesia, alpha rhythms measured using electroencephalography undergo a striking shift from posterior to anterior, termed anteriorization, where the ubiquitous waking alpha is lost and a frontal alpha emerges. The functional significance of alpha anteriorization and the precise brain regions contributing to the phenomenon are a mystery. While posterior alpha is thought to be generated by thalamocortical circuits connecting nuclei of the sensory thalamus with the…
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2022 · 48 citations
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) is highly effective in alleviating movement disability in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, its therapeutic mechanism of action is unknown. The healthy striatum exhibits rich dynamics resulting from an interaction of beta, gamma, and theta oscillations. These rhythms are essential to selection and execution of motor programs, and their loss or exaggeration due to dopamine (DA) depletion in PD is a major source of behavi…
Recent grants
NIH · $4.4M · 2018
Thalamocortical Dynamics and Consciousness
NIH · $2.0M · 2017–2023
NIH · $942k · 2003
Frequent coauthors
- 531 shared
Patrick L. Purdon
Stanford University
- 365 shared
Riccardo Barbieri
Politecnico di Milano
- 224 shared
Zhe Chen
Guilin University of Electronic Technology
- 186 shared
Oluwaseun Akeju
Boston University
- 175 shared
Brian L. Edlow
Massachusetts General Hospital
- 167 shared
Ken Solt
Massachusetts General Hospital
- 136 shared
Yelena G. Bodien
- 124 shared
Wasim Q. Malik
Labs
Awards & honors
- NIH Director’s Pioneer Award
- NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award
- 2011 Jerome Sacks Award for Outstanding Cross Disciplinary R…
- Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological…
- Fellow of the American Statistical Association
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