Four researchers with MIT ties earn 2023 Schmidt Science Fellowships
Four researchers with ties to MIT have been named Schmidt Science Fellows this year. Lillian Chin ’17, SM ’19; Neil Dalvie PD ’22, PhD ’22; Suong Nguyen, and Yirui Zhang SM ’19, PhD ’23 are among the...
View ArticleFrom molecular to whole-brain scale in a simple animal, study reveals...
Because serotonin is one of the primary chemicals the brain uses to influence mood and behavior, it is also the most common target of psychiatric drugs. To improve those drugs and to invent better...
View Article40 Hz vibrations reduce Alzheimer’s pathology, symptoms in mouse models
Evidence that noninvasive sensory stimulation of 40 Hz gamma frequency brain rhythms can reduce Alzheimer’s disease pathology and symptoms, already shown with light and sound by multiple research...
View ArticleFrom labs to the streets, experts work to defuse childhood threats to mental...
Threats to lifelong mental health can arise for young children from sources including poverty, abuse or neglect at home, and racism, inequity, and pollution outside their doors, but the hopeful message...
View ArticleAtlas of human brain blood vessels highlights changes in Alzheimer’s disease
Your brain is powered by 400 miles of blood vessels that provide nutrients, clear out waste products, and form a tight protective barrier — the blood-brain barrier — that controls which molecules can...
View ArticleWithout a key extracellular protein, neuronal axons break and synaptic...
Perhaps the most obvious feature of a neuron is the long branch called an axon that ventures far from the cell body to connect with other neurons or muscles. If that long, thin projection ever seems...
View ArticleWhen computer vision works more like a brain, it sees more like people do
From cameras to self-driving cars, many of today’s technologies depend on artificial intelligence to extract meaning from visual information. Today’s AI technology has artificial neural networks at its...
View ArticleHow Tau tangles form in the brain
Many neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s, are characterized by tangled proteins called Tau fibrils. In a new study, MIT chemists have gained insight into how these fibrils form, and...
View ArticleBrady Weissbourd named Klingenstein-Simons Fellow
The Clytia hemisphaerica jellyfish is not only a hypnotically graceful swimmer, but also an amazing neuron-manufacturing machine with a remarkable ability to expand and regenerate its nervous...
View ArticleBrain networks encoding memory come together via electric fields, study finds
The “circuit” metaphor of the brain is as indisputable as it is familiar: Neurons forge direct physical connections to create functional networks, for instance to store memories or produce thoughts....
View ArticleA cool path to disease deceleration
In 2020, Kathrin "Kat" Kajderowicz's father passed away from lung cancer. Kajderowicz was in charge of her father's health care for as long as she can remember. While he suffered from various...
View ArticleAI models are powerful, but are they biologically plausible?
Artificial neural networks, ubiquitous machine-learning models that can be trained to complete many tasks, are so called because their architecture is inspired by the way biological neurons process...
View ArticleSummer research offers a springboard to advanced studies
Doctoral studies at MIT aren’t a calling for everyone, but they can be for anyone who has had opportunities to discover that science and technology research is their passion and to build the experience...
View ArticleCracking the code that relates brain and behavior in a simple animal
To understand the full relationship between brain activity and behavior, scientists have needed a way to map this relationship for all of the neurons across a whole brain — a so far insurmountable...
View ArticleStudy connects neural gene expression differences to functional distinctions
Figuring out how hundreds of different kinds of brain cells develop from their unique expression of thousands of genes promises to not only advance understanding of how the brain works in health, but...
View ArticleKimberly Rose Bennett awarded HHMI Gilliam Fellowship
Kimberly Rose Bennett, a PhD candidate in the Medical Engineering and Medical Physics (MEMP) program within the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST), has been selected by the...
View ArticleMolecule reduces inflammation in Alzheimer’s models
Though drug developers have achieved some progress in treating Alzheimer’s disease with medicines that reduce amyloid-beta protein, other problems of the disease, including inflammation, continue...
View ArticleStudy decodes surprising approach mice take in learning
Neuroscience discoveries ranging from the nature of memory to treatments for disease have depended on reading the minds of mice, so researchers need to truly understand what the rodents’ behavior is...
View ArticleRe-imagining our theories of language
Over a decade ago, the neuroscientist Ev Fedorenko asked 48 English speakers to complete tasks like reading sentences, recalling information, solving math problems, and listening to music. As they did...
View ArticleIndividual neurons mix multiple RNA edits of key synapse protein, study finds
Neurons are talkers. They each communicate with fellow neurons, muscles, or other cells by releasing neurotransmitter chemicals at “synapse” junctions, ultimately producing functions ranging from...
View ArticleOne scientist’s journey from the Middle East to MIT
“I recently exhaled a breath I’ve been holding in for nearly half my life. After applying over a decade ago, I’m finally an American. This means so many things to me. Foremost, it means I can go back...
View ArticleHow a single neuron’s parallel outputs can coordinate many aspects of behavior
A new MIT study that focuses on a single cell in one of nature’s simplest nervous systems provides an in-depth illustration of how individual neurons can use multiple means to drive complex...
View ArticleStudy advances understanding of visual recognition memory
Because figuring out what is new and what is familiar in what we see is such a critically important ability for prioritizing our attention, neuroscientists have spent decades trying to figure out how...
View ArticleRetraining the brain for better vision
Hundreds of millions of people worldwide suffer from a vision condition called amblyopia, or lazy eye, with imbalanced vision in their two eyes. Unless this disabling condition is caught and treated at...
View ArticleStudy: Deep neural networks don’t see the world the way we do
Human sensory systems are very good at recognizing objects that we see or words that we hear, even if the object is upside down or the word is spoken by a voice we’ve never heard.Computational models...
View ArticleMIT scientists receive NIH BRAIN Initiative grants
In the human brain, 86 billion neurons form more than 100 trillion connections with other neurons at junctions called synapses. Scientists at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research are working...
View ArticleUsing AI to optimize for rapid neural imaging
Connectomics, the ambitious field of study that seeks to map the intricate network of animal brains, is undergoing a growth spurt. Within the span of a decade, it has journeyed from its nascent stages...
View ArticleA new wave of treatment for Alzheimer’s disease
Alzheimer's disease, the appalling and baffling degenerative brain illness that plagues many elderly people, may be caused by several distinct mechanisms driven by various genetic and lifestyle...
View ArticleAging Brain Initiative symposium showcases “cutting-edge” research across MIT
Spanning computer science, mechanical engineering, biological engineering, neuroscience, and other disciplines, presenters at MIT’s Aging Brain Initiative Symposium Oct. 23 delivered a rich and diverse...
View ArticleMark Bear wins Society for Neuroscience Julius Axelrod Prize
Recognizing his research advancing understanding of how the brain changes with experience by altering the strength of connections among neurons, a phenomenon called “synaptic plasticity,” the Society...
View ArticleElly Nedivi receives 2023 Kreig Cortical Kudos Discoverer Award
The Cajal Club has named Elly Nedivi, William R. and Linda R. Young Professor of Neuroscience in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, the 2023 recipient of the Krieg Cortical Kudos Discoverer...
View ArticleHow a mutation in microglia elevates Alzheimer’s risk
A rare but potent genetic mutation that alters a protein in the brain’s immune cells, known as microglia, can give people as much as a threefold greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. A new...
View ArticleNanoparticle-delivered RNA reduces neuroinflammation in lab tests
Some Covid-19 vaccines safely and effectively used lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) to deliver messenger RNA to cells. A new MIT study shows that different nanoparticles could be used for a potential...
View ArticleComplex, unfamiliar sentences make the brain’s language network work harder
With help from an artificial language network, MIT neuroscientists have discovered what kind of sentences are most likely to fire up the brain’s key language processing centers.The new study reveals...
View ArticleFood for thought
MIT graduate student Juana De La O describes herself as a food-motivated organism, so it’s no surprise that she reaches for food and baking analogies when she’s discussing her thesis work in the lab of...
View ArticleStudy reveals a universal pattern of brain wave frequencies
Throughout the brain’s cortex, neurons are arranged in six distinctive layers, which can be readily seen with a microscope. A team of MIT and Vanderbilt University neuroscientists has now found that...
View ArticleEvidence that gamma rhythm stimulation can treat neurological disorders is...
A surprising MIT study published in Nature at the end of 2016 helped to spur interest in the possibility that light flickering at the frequency of a particular gamma-band brain rhythm could produce...
View ArticleHow the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background
MIT neuroscientists have found that the brain’s sensitivity to rewarding experiences — a critical factor in motivation and attention — can be shaped by socioeconomic conditions.In a study of 12 to...
View ArticleProfessor Emeritus Peter Schiller, a pioneer researcher of the visual system,...
Peter Schiller, professor emeritus in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a member of the MIT faculty since 1964, died on Dec. 23, 2023. He was 92.Born in Berlin to Hungarian parents in...
View ArticleCreating new skills and new connections with MIT’s Quantitative Methods Workshop
Starting on New Year’s Day, when many people were still clinging to holiday revelry, scores of students and faculty members from about a dozen partner universities instead flipped open their laptops...
View ArticleSimons Center’s collaborative approach propels autism research, at MIT and...
The secret to the success of MIT’s Simons Center for the Social Brain is in the name. With a founding philosophy of “collaboration and community” that has supported scores of scientists across more...
View ArticleHow cognition changes before dementia hits
Individuals with mild cognitive impairment, especially of the “amnestic subtype” (aMCI), are at increased risk for dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease relative to cognitively healthy older adults. Now,...
View ArticleDeciphering the cellular mechanisms behind ALS
At a time in which scientific research is increasingly cross-disciplinary, Ernest Fraenkel, the Grover M. Hermann Professor in Health Sciences and Technology in MIT’s Department of Biological...
View ArticleHow sensory gamma rhythm stimulation clears amyloid in Alzheimer’s mice
Studies at MIT and elsewhere are producing mounting evidence that light flickering and sound clicking at the gamma brain rhythm frequency of 40 hertz (Hz) can reduce Alzheimer’s disease (AD)...
View ArticleFor people who speak many languages, there’s something special about their...
A new study of people who speak many languages has found that there is something special about how the brain processes their native language.In the brains of these polyglots — people who speak five or...
View ArticleStudy: Movement disorder ALS and cognitive disorder FTLD show strong...
On the surface, the movement disorder amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and the cognitive disorder frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), which underlies...
View ArticleReevaluating an approach to functional brain imaging
A new way of imaging the brain with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) does not directly detect neural activity as originally reported, according to scientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain...
View ArticleFrom neurons to learning and memory
Mark Harnett, an associate professor at MIT, still remembers the first time he saw electrical activity spiking from a living neuron.He was a senior at Reed College and had spent weeks building a patch...
View ArticleMapping the brain pathways of visual memorability
For nearly a decade, a team of MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) researchers have been seeking to uncover why certain images persist in a people's minds, while many...
View ArticleThree from MIT awarded 2024 Guggenheim Fellowships
MIT faculty members Roger Levy, Tracy Slatyer, and Martin Wainwright are among 188 scientists, artists, and scholars awarded 2024 fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Working...
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