Department of Physiology and Pharmacology

Paul Brown

Paul Brown
Professor of Physiology

Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1968
Postdoctoral Fellowship, Cornell University

Phone: 304-293-1512
Email: pbbrown@hsc.wvu.edu

Research Interests

Spinal cord physiology, tactile discrimination

Description of Research

Our research concerns the organization of spinal cord cells which process information from skin touch receptors. We have shown that these cells form a precise map of the skin. The components of this map appear largely to be controlled by peripheral innervation density. We are now examining the capacity of these cells to mediate information needed for spatial discriminations such as localization and two-point discrimination. Our laboratory uses single - unit and evoked potential recording, neuroanatomical methods, and computer analysis and modeling.

Recent Publications

Koerber H R and P B Brown. Quantitative analysis of dorsal horn cell receptive fields following limited differentiation. J Neurophysiol 74:2065-2076, 1995.

Brown P B, R Millecchia, J L Culberson, W Gladfelter, and D Covalt-Dunning. Variation of dorsal horn cell dendritic spread with map scale. J Comp Neurol 374:354-361, 1996.

Brown P B, H R Koerber, and R Millecchia. Assembly of the dorsal horn somatotopic map. Somatosens Mot Res 14:93-106, 1997.

Brown P B and R Millecchia. Visualization of significant differences in somatotopic maps: a distributed t-test. J Neurosci Methods 77:9-24, 1997.

Wang L, R Millecchia, and P B Brown. Correlation of peripheral innervation density and dorsal horn map scale. J Neurophysiol 78:689-702, 1997.

Brown P B, R Millecchia, J J Lawson, S Stephens, P Harton, and J C Culberson. Dorsal horn spatial representation of simple cutaneous stimuli. J Neurophysiol 79:983-998, 1998.