Pioneers of the EEG, episode 7: Alfred Lee Loomis
Channel: The Brainclinics Foundation
Date: 2021-01-06

Episode 7 – also the last episode of this series – of the Brainclinics “Pioneers of the EEG” series concerns the enigmatic and reclusive Alfred Lee Loomis, attorney, millionaire, philanthropist, physicist, inventor of LORAN and radar. He was a scientist too, befriended with the likes of Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and Herbert Jasper. Alfred Lee Loomis conducted many EEG experiments in his private laboratory in Tuxedo Park where he discovered the qualitative changes in the EEG that accompany sleep and wakefulness (polysomnography), was the first to describe sleep spindles and K-complexes and was the first to apply conditioning principles to the EEG (currently also referred to as BCI or neurofeedback), thus a real pioneer of the EEG.

In 1939, with the unrest and war looming in Europe, Loomis decided to donate his EEG equipment to Halowell Davis’ group at Harvard Medical School and changed his research focus and became instrumental in many war-related technologies that changed the tide of WWII. President Franklin Roosevelt is said to have credited Loomis as second to Winston Churchill in turning the tide of World War II in the Allies favor.

These videos can be freely used for scientific and educational purposes (for commercial usage please contact us).

This episode has been peer reviewed by Prof. A.M.L. Coenen (Radboud University).
Conceptualized and produced by Brainclinics Insights.