Barbara Brown (scientist)

Barbara B. Brown (died 1999) was a research psychologist who popularized biofeedback and neurofeedback in the 1970s. "Brown was the biofeedback field's most prolific writer and most successful popularizer." [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060105445]

Brown earned her Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in 1950. She went from a technician at pharmaceutical company Merrill to heading their Department of Pharmacology. From there she went to Riker Laboratories and Psychopharmacology Research Laboratories. She became Associate Clinical Professor of Pharmacology at the University of California Center for Health Sciences in Los Angeles and at the University of California, Irvine. She lectured at the Department of Psychiatry at University of California, Los Angeles. [http://tobaccodocuments.org/lor/03607874-7884.html]

Dr. Brown created and popularized the word "biofeedback". She did her ground-breaking research when she was Chief of Experiential Physiology Research at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Sepulveda, California. [http://tobaccodocuments.org/lor/03607874-7884.html]

"She was a tough crusty little gal. It must have taken that kind of feistiness to work in a field that was just being created, standing up against a much bigger medical model that, at the time believed that the autonomic nervous system was the "involuntary" one. She, and her early colleagues ... obliterated the concept of the involuntary nervous system, scientifically proving (or inspiring further research that showed) that people could learn to control just about any physiological function that was fed back using biofeedback technology." [Robert Kall, [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0829009965] ]

Brown was co-founder and first president (1969-1970) of the Biofeedback Research Society, which evolved into the Biofeedback Society of America and then into the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback.

In later years she suffered a stroke and died in 1999 in Rancho Mirage. [http://www.aapb.org/files/public/BIOFEEDBACK_WINTER_01.pdf]

Popular culture

Brown was featured in a 1960 episode of the television series "". The episode, titled "The Sacred Mushroom", was a rare documentary-style departure for the series and dealt with the search for psychedelic mushrooms in Mexico.

Bibliography

* "New Mind, New Body: Bio Feedback: New Directions for the Mind", Harper Collins, 1974, hardcover ISBN 0060105496
* "The Biofeedback Syllabus: A Handbook for the Psychophysiologic Study of Biofeedback", Charles C. Thomas, Feb. 1975, hardcover, ISBN 978-03980326685
* "Stress and the Art of Biofeedback", Harper Collins, Jan. 1977. ISBN 978-0060105440
* "Between Health and Illness: New Notions on Stress and the Nature of Well Being", Houghton Mifflin, 1984, hardcover ISBN 0395346347
* "Supermind: The Ultimate Energy", Bantam paperback 1983, ISBN 0553141465
* "Biofeedback and Consciousness Commemorative Edition Audio Tape": Invited address at the sixth Annual meeting of the AAPB (then known as the BRS). [http://www.aapb.org/i4a/store/category.cfm?category_id=4]

References