Barbara Brown

Who was Barbara Brown?

Barbara B. Brown 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," said one Amazon review. Her colleagues agreed. Biofeedback Magazine, a publication of the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback, noted that she was "among the first and most successful to make the public aware of the power and potential of biofeedback."

Brown earned her Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in 1950. She went from a technician at the William S. Merrell division of pharmaceutical company Richardson-Merrell to heading Merell's Department of Pharmacology. From there, she went to Riker Laboratories, then to Psychopharmacology Research Laboratories. Brown later became an Associate Clinical Professor of Pharmacology at the University of California, Los Angeles Center for Health Sciences and at the University of California, Irvine. She also lectured in the Department of Psychiatry at University of California, Los Angeles.

Dr. Brown created and popularized the word "biofeedback." She conducted her ground-breaking research when she was Chief of Experiential Physiology Research at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Sepulveda, California.