Massachusetts General Hospital

BiographyUsing fMRI, EEG, neurophysiologic recordings, microdialysis methods, and mathematical modeling, my laboratory collaborates with investigators from MGH, Harvard, MIT, and Boston University to use a systems neuroscience approach in studying 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; safer, site-specific anesthetic drugs; and to develop better neurophysiologically-based methods for measuring depth of anesthesia.

Recent technological and experimental advances in the capabilities to record signals from neural systems have led to an unprecedented increase in the types and volume of data collected in neuroscience experiments and hence, in the need for appropriate techniques to analyze them. Therefore, using combinations of likelihood, Bayesian, state space, time-series and point process approaches, a primary focus of the research in my laboratory is the development of statistical methods and signal-processing algorithms for neuroscience data analysis.

We have used our methods to:

• characterize how hippocampal neurons represent spatial information in their ensemble firing patterns.
• analyze formation of spatial receptive fields in the hippocampus during learning of novel environments.
• relate changes in hippocampal neural activity to changes in performance during procedural learning.
• improve signal extraction from fMR imaging time-series.
• characterize the spiking properties of neurons in primary motor cortex.
• localize dynamically sources of neural activity in the brain from EEG and MEG recordings made during cognitive, motor and somatosensory tasks.
• measure the period of the circadian pacemaker (human biological clock) and its sensitivity to light.
• characterize the dynamics of human heart beats in physiological and pathological states.

PublicationsView publications

Brown named to Zapol professorship

MGH Hotline 10.23.09 The Warren M. Zapol Professorship in Anaesthesia, a new endowed chair at Harvard Medical School (HMS), has been established to honor the clinical and research accomplishments of Warren M. Zapol, MD, who served as anesthetist-in-chief in the MGH Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine from 1994 to 2008 and who is now the department's anesthetist-in-chief emeritus.

SAC meeting to honor past scientific leadership, address current challenges

ALL MGHERS are invited to attend the 2011 meeting of the MGH Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC), which will commemorate the hospital’s bicentennial with a look back at significant research accomplishments of MGH investigators and examine challenges facing today’s research community.

SAC meeting

The 64th meeting of the MGH Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) on April 14 celebrated key accomplishments of MGH investigators, past and present, and examined strategies for meeting the challenges currently facing the academic biomedical research community.

In General 05.11.12

In General awards and honors

Major NIH grants support innovative research projects

Two MGH-led research teams and one MGH investigator have received major grants from the National Institutes of Health.

Uncovering the neurobiological basis of general anesthesia

Emery Brown, MD, PhD, author of a New England Journal of Medicine review article, lays out a conceptual framework for understanding general anesthesia by discussing its relation to sleep and coma.

Common stimulant may speed recovery from general anesthesia

Administration of the commonly used stimulant drug methylphenidate was able to speed recovery from general anesthesia in an animal study conducted at MGH. The report is the first demonstration in mammals of what could be a safe and effective way to induce arousal from general anesthesia.

EEG pattern reflects brain's shift into low-energy, protective mode

A distinctive pattern of brain activity associated with conditions including deep anesthesia, coma and congenital brain disorders appears to represent the brain's shift into a protective, low-activity state in response to reduced metabolic energy.