Kimberly Brownley, PhD

Kimberly Brownley, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the UNC Department of Psychiatry and a principal faculty member of the UNC Stress and Health Research Program and the UNC Eating Disorders Program. She received her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1996, and then completed a postdoctoral research and clinical training fellowship in Behavioral Medicine at the University of Miami, FL from 1997 to 1999. Dr. Brownley has been researching various aspects of human psychology, physiology, and behavior for over 20 years. Much of her work focuses on the psychobiology of appetite regulation including the study of hormones that signal hunger and satiety, how such hormones respond to different types of food, and the role that these hormones play in disordered eating behavior and weight gain. With the support of funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, and the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, Dr. Brownley is currently investigating (1) the impact of dietary chromium supplementation on eating behavior, mood, and appetite hormones in persons with binge eating disorder; (2) weight and metabolic disturbances associated with use of atypical antipsychotic medications; (3) racial ethnic disparities in obesity; and (4) the role of gut peptides in symptom expression in Postprandial Distress Syndrome. She is also the recipient of a 2009 Pilot Grant from the UNC Institute on Aging, which is funding her work on biomarkers of cardiovascular disease risk in family caregivers of persons with dementia. Author of over three dozen peer-reviewed scientific articles and book chapters, Dr. Brownley also devotes time to serving as Associate Editor of the International Journal of Psychophysiology and as a member of the scientific advisory committees for the UNC Clinical and Translational Research Center and the Binge Eating Disorder Association.

Click on image for Dr. Brownley's PubMed indexed publications