Institute of Medicine elects Brown

Elizabeth A. Thomson, News Office
October 13, 2007

Emery N. Brown, M.D., a professor in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, has been elected to the Institute of Medicine.

He is among 65 new members of the Washington, D.C.-based institute, raising its total active membership to 1,538.

The Institute of Medicine is one of the four national academies, along with the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council. It serves as a national resource for independent, scientifically informed analysis and recommendations on human health issues.

A primary focus of Brown's research is the development of statistical methods and signal-processing algorithms for neuroscience data analysis. A new research direction in his laboratory is to use a systems neuroscience approach to study how the state of general anesthesia is induced and maintained. The long-term goal of this research is to establish a neurophysiological definition of anesthesia, and to develop safer, site-specific anesthetic drugs and neurophysiologically based methods for measuring the depth of anesthesia.

Brown is also affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital.

A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on October 17, 2007 (download PDF).