Event

ISR Distinguished Lecturer: Emery Brown, General Anesthesia-Induced Loss of Consciousness

Thursday, May 21, 2009
5:00 p.m.
1115 Computer Science Instructional Center (CSIC)
Regina King
301 405 6615
rking12@umd.edu
http://www.isr.umd.edu/events/dls.htm

ISR Distinguished Lecturer Series
Characterizing General Anesthesia-Induced Loss of Consciousness

Emery N. Brown, M.D., Ph.D.
Warren M. Zapol Professor of Anesthesia
Harvard Medical School
Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care
Massachusetts General Hospital

Professor of Computational Neuroscience and Health Sciences and Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Reception at 4:30 p.m. outside 1115 Computer Science Instructional Center (CSIC)
Lecture at 5:00 p.m., 1115 Computer Science Instructional Center (CSIC)

Roundtable discussion Friday, May 22 at 11:00 a.m., 1146 A.V. Williams Building

Host
Nuno Martins

Abstract
General anesthesia is a drug-induced, reversible condition comprised of five behavioral states: hypnosis (loss of consciousness), amnesia (loss of memory), analgesia (loss of pain sensation), akinesia (immobility), and hemodynamic stability with control of the stress response. The mechanisms by which anesthetic drugs induce the state of general anesthesia remain one of the biggest mysteries of modern medicine. The neural circuitry responsible for each of the five behavioral states of general anesthesia is being actively investigated. We present findings from our current research in humans on the use of combined functional magnetic resonance imaging/electroencephalography (fMRI/EEG), high density EEG and multielectrode recordings to track loss and recovery of consciousness under general anesthesia. This research presents new and challenging experimental engineering and signal processing problems.

Biography
Emery N. Brown is the Warren M. Zapol Professor of Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, and Professor of Computational Neuroscience and Health Sciences and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prof. Brown is an anesthesiologist-statistician who uses functional imaging to study in humans how anesthetic drugs act in the brain to create the state of general anesthesia. He also develops signal processing algorithms to study how systems in the brain represent and transmit information. Prof. Brown is a member of the Association of University Anesthesiologists, a Fellow of the American Institute of Biomedical Engineering, the American Statistical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the IEEE, a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and a 2007 recipient of the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award. Dr. Brown received his B.A. in Applied Mathematics (magna cum laude) from Harvard College, his M.D. (magna cum laude) from Harvard Medical School and his Ph.D. in statistics from Harvard University.

Audience: Graduate  Undergraduate  Faculty  Post-Docs  Alumni