2013 Academic Research Evening
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Anesthesiologist and statistician Dr. Emery Brown keynoted the 2013 Academic Research Evening. Dr. Brown is currently a professor of Computational Neuroscience and Health Sciences and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is also the Warren M. Zapol Professor of Anaesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Brown is perhaps best known for his research in understanding the principles behind general anesthesia and the mechanisms that create the reversible states of hypnosis, amnesia, analgesia, akinesia and hemodynamic stability, a realm of medicine that, as of yet, has remained largely unexplained. In 2007 he received the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award to develop a systems neuroscience approach to implement real-time studies of human, monkey and rat brains under general anesthesia. His techniques include fMRI, EEG, neurophysiological recordings, micro-dialysis methods and mathematical modeling. The goal is to establish a more precise, neurophysiological understanding of general anesthesia in the hopes that it will lead to safer drug development, better methods for measuring anesthesia depth, and improved, site-specific drug delivery that can decrease the negative effects of surgery. The project is a collaboration between MIT’s Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department, MIT/Harvard Division of Health Science and Technology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston University.
Keynote Address: Characterizing Propofol-Induced Loss of and Recovery of Consciousness
