Massachusetts General Hospital

Research Areas

• Neurophysiological mechanisms of general anesthesia and sedation

Description of Research

My research integrates neuroimaging, biomedical signal processing, and the systems neuroscience of general anesthesia and sedation.

Brain activity at the moment of anesthesia-induced unconsciousness

My group conducts human studies of anesthesia-induced unconsciousness, using a variety of techniques including multimodal neuroimaging, high-density EEG, and invasive neurophysiological recordings used to diagnose medically refractory epilepsy.  We also develop novel methods in neuroimaging and biomedical signal processing to support these studies, as well as methods for monitoring level of consciousness under general anesthesia using EEG.

Principal Investigator:

• Patrick L. Purdon, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellows:

• Behtash Babadi, PhD
• Michael J. Prerau, PhD

Graduate Students:

• Pavitra Krishnaswamy
• Camilo Lamus
• Laura Lewis
• Elvira Pirondini
• Patrick Stokes
• Veronica Weiner

Research Assistants:

• Katie Hartnack
• Gabriel Obregon-Henao
• Aaron Sampson

Current Projects

• Neurophysiological mechanisms of general anesthesia
• Electroencephalogram (EEG) monitoring during general anesthesia
• Multi-modal functional neuroimaging
• Solutions to the magnetoencephalogram (MEG) and EEG inverse problem
• Biomedical signal processing

Prestigious NIH grants support innovative MGH researchers

MGH Hotline 2.25.09 Two MGH investigators are among the first recipients of the new Transformative R01 (T-R01) Awards, established by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support innovative research projects that have the potential to overturn scientific dogma.

• Lewis LD, Weiner VS, Mukamel, EA, Donoghue JA, Eskandar EN, Madsen JR, Anderson WS, Hochberg LR, Cash SS, Brown EN, Purdon PL. Rapid fragmentation of neuronal networks at the onset of propofol-induced unconsciousness. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. (in press)
• Obregon G, Babadi B, Lamus C, Brown EN, Purdon PL.  A Fast Iterative Greedy Algorithm for MEG Source Localization.  Conf Proc IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2012. (in press)
• Lamus C, Hämäläinen MS, Temereanca S, Brown EN, Purdon PL. A spatiotemporal dynamic distributed solution to the MEG inverse problem. Neuroimage. 2012 63(2):894-909. Epub 2011 Nov 30
• Cimenser A, Purdon PL, Pierce ET, Walsh J. Salazar AF, Harrell PG, Tavares-Stoeckel C, Habeeb K, Brown EN. Tracking brain states under general anesthesia by using global coherence analysis.  Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011. 108(21):8832-7
• Ching S, Cimenser A, Purdon PL, Brown EN, Kopell NJ. Thalamocortical model for a propofol-induced alpha-rhythm associated with loss of consciousness.  Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010. 107(52):22665-70. 
• Purdon PL, Pierce ET, Bonmassar G, Walsh J, Harrell PG, Kwo J, Deschler D, Mullaly CM, Barlow M, Merhar R, Lamus C, Maginnis S, Skoniecki D, Sullivan M, Higgins HA, Brown EN.  Simultaneous electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging of general anesthesia.  Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2009. 1157: 61-70.

Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine

Phone: 617-726-3030

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