Dr. Brown has studied the function and neuroanatomy of the basal ganglia. Most importantly, she showed a high resolution map of the body in the striatum of rats and proposed that the striatum is a combinational “map” for sensorimotor, cognitive and emotional stimuli.

She also participated in work on cerebral correlates of mobility, executive function in normal aging,with Dr. Helena Blumen.

Currently, she studies love, attachment, relationship factors and personality by using brain imaging techniques in humans. 

Romantic Love Studies- 

Fisher H, Aron A, Brown LL. Romantic love: an fMRI study of a neural mechanism for mate choice, Journal of Comparative Neurology5;493(1):58-62, 2005.

Aron, A. Fisher, H.E., Mashek, D.J., Strong, G. Li. H-f., Brown, L.L.  Reward, Motivation and Emotion Systems Associated with Early-Stage Intense Romantic Love.  Journal of Neurophysiology 94:327-37, 2005.

Helen E. Fisher, Lucy L. Brown, Arthur Aron, Greg Strong, Debra Mashek. Reward, Addiction, and Emotional Regulation Systems associated with Rejection in Love. Journal of Neurophysiology 104:51-60, 2010.

Fisher HE, Xu X, Aron A, Brown LL.  Intense, Passionate, Romantic Love : A Natural Addiction?  How the Fields that Investigate Romance and Substance Abuse Can Inform Each Other. Frontiers in Psychology,7:687, 2016. 

doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00687

Acevedo BP, Poulin M, Brown LL.  Beyond Romance: Neural and Genetic Correlates of Altruism in Pair Bonds, Behavioral Neuroscience, 133(1), 18-31, 2019.  https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fbne0000293

Acevedo BP, Poulin M, Geher G, Grafton S, Brown LL.  The Neural and Genetic Correlates of Satisfying Sexual Activity in Heterosexual Pair Bonds.  Brain and Behavior, 2019, 

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/brb3.1289

Brown, L.L.Intense Romantic Love Uses Subconscious Survival Brain Circuits. In: Think Tank, Ed.: David Linden, Yale University Press, 2018.

Functional Neuroanatomy of the Basal Ganglia

Brown, L.L., Makman, M.H., Wolfson, L.I., Dvorkin, B., Warner, C. and Katzman, R. A Direct Role of Dopamine in the Rat Subthalamic Nucleus and an Adjacent Intra peduncular Area. Science, 206:1416 1418, 1979.

Brown, L.L. Somatotopic Organization in Rat Striatum: Evidence for a Combinational Map, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 89:7403-7407, 1992.

Sharp, F.R., Rando, T.A., Greenberg, S.A., Brown, L.L., Sagar, S.M. Pseudochoreoathetosis: Movements Associated with Loss of Proprioception, Archives of Neurology, 51:1103-1109, 1994.

Brown, L.L., Hand, P.J., Divac, I. The Representation of a single vibrissa in the rat neostriatum: peaks of metabolism reveal a distributed functional module, Neuroscience, 75:717-728, 1996.

Brown, L.L., Smith, D.M., Goldbloom, L. Organizing principles for cortical integration in the rat neostriatum: the body surface map is an ordered lattice of curved laminae and radial points, Journal of Comparative Neurology, 392 (4): 468-488, 1998.

Brown, L.L., Feldman, S.M., Smith, D.M., Cavanaugh, J.R., Ackermann, R.F. and Graybiel, A.M.: Differential metabolic activity in the striosome and matrix compartments of the rat striatum during natural behaviors, Journal of Neuroscience, 22(1):305-314, 2002.