In 2015, Brown was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for the development of neural signal processing algorithms for understanding memory encoding and modeling of brain states of anesthesia.
In 2022 he was awarded the Gruber Neuroscience Prize, alongside theoretical neuroscientists Larry Abbott, Terrence Sejnowski and Haim Sompolinsky.
[3][7] Following graduation, Brown received an International Rotary Foundation Fellowship to study mathematics at the Institut Fourier des Mathèmatiques Pures in Grenoble, France.
[3] In addition to his professorial positions, Brown serves as the Director of the Neuroscience Statistics Research Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the co-director of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and an associate director of MIT's Institute for Medical Engineering & Science.
[9] Brown developed statistical methods to characterize the properties of the human circadian system (biological clock) from core temperature data recorded under the constant routine and free-running and forced desynchrony protocols.
He developed a state-space point process (SSPP) paradigm to study how neural systems maintain dynamic representations of information.
[15] For the analysis of neural spiking activity and binary behavioral tasks represented as multivariate or univariate point processes (0-1 events that occur in continuous time), his research produced analogs of the Kalman filter, Kalman smoothing, sequential Monte Carlo algorithms, and combined state and parameter estimation algorithms commonly applied to continuous-valued time series observations.
[22] Brown applied the state-space paradigm to: analyze learning in behavioral neuroscience experiments;[23][24][25] study the relationship between learning and changes in hippocampal function in humans;[26] assess the efficacy of deep brain stimulation in enhancing behavior performance in humans and non-human primates;[27] and define precisely changes in levels of consciousness under propofol-induced general anesthesia.
[28] With Partha Mitra, Brown co-founded and co-directed the Neuroinformatics Summer Course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA from 2002 to 2006.
[5] In 2004, Brown began a systems neuroscience research program to study the mechanisms of anesthetic action by forming and leading an interdisciplinary collaboration of anesthesiologists, neuroscientists, a statistician, a neurosurgeon, neurologists, bioengineers and a mathematician at MGH, MIT and Boston University.
[33] His anesthesiology research has made fundamental theoretical and experimental contributions to understanding the neurophysiology of general anesthesia.
These oscillations, which are readily visible in standard electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings, alter arousal by impairing normal communication between regions.
They have shown that the anesthetic state can be rapidly reversed by administering methylphenidate (Ritalin)[42] or activation of dopaminergic systems.
[47] Brown's group have also shown that burst suppression can be precisely controlled to maintain a therapeutic, medically induced coma.
Brown's anesthesiology research has been featured on National Public Radio,[50] in Scientific American,[51] the MIT Technology Review,[5] the New York Times[52] and in TEDMED[53] 2014.
[3] Brown was named as one of America's leading doctors by Black Enterprise Magazine[63] and was named one of Get Konnected's GK50 Boston's 50 Most Influential People of Color in Healthcare & Life Sciences[64] In 2018, Brown received the Dickson Prize in Science for his work on the statistical analysis of neuronal data and research on anesthesia.