Millions of students nationwide use text-supplemented audiobooks, learning tools that are thought to help those who struggle with reading keep up in the classroom. A new study from scientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research finds that many students do benefit from the audiobooks, gaining new vocabulary through the stories they hear. But study […]
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What if a technology could reanimate parts of the body that have lost their connection to the brain — like a bladder that can no longer empty due to a spinal cord injury, or intestines that can’t push food forward due to Crohn’s disease? What if this technology could also send sensations such as hunger […]
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Professor Sara Prescott embodies the kind of mentorship every graduate student hopes to find: grounded in scientific rigor, guided by kindness, and defined by a deep commitment to well-being. Her approach reflects a simple but powerful belief that transformative mentorship is not only about advancing research, but about cultivating confidence, belonging, and resilience in the […]
Read More Professor Sara Prescott embodies the kind of mentorship every graduate student hopes to find: grounded in scientific rigor, guided by kindness, and defined by a deep commitment to well-being. Her approach reflects a simple but powerful belief that transformative mentorship is not only about advancing research, but about cultivating confidence, belonging, and resilience in the […]
Read MoreMIT Picower Professor Li-Huei Tsai, who has led The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory since 2009, will step down from the role of director at the end of the academic year in May. Her decision frees her to focus exclusively on her academic work, including her continued leadership of MIT’s Aging Brain Initiative and […]
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MIT senior Srihitha Dasari never imagined she would be speaking in front of the United Nations about health care, technology, and the power of co-designing public health interventions in collaboration with impacted communities. But when she stepped up to the podium to speak about digital well-being and community-centered health care design, she carried with her […]
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One of the symptoms of schizophrenia is difficulty incorporating new information about the world. This can lead people with schizophrenia to struggle with making decisions and, eventually, to lose touch with reality. MIT neuroscientists have now identified a gene mutation that appears to give rise to this type of difficulty. In a study of mice, […]
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When patients undergo general anesthesia, doctors can choose among several drugs. Although each of these drugs acts on neurons in different ways, they all lead to the same result: a disruption of the brain’s balance between stability and excitability, according to a new MIT study. This disruption causes neural activity to become increasingly unstable, until […]
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MIT researchers have discovered that two common genetic mutations that cause Rett syndrome each set off a molecular chain of events that compromises the structural integrity of developing brain blood vessels, making them leaky. The study traces the problem to overexpression of a particular microRNA (miRNA-126-3p), and shows that tamping down the miRNA’s levels helps […]
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MIT neuroscientists have figured out how the brain is able to focus on a single voice among a cacophony of many voices, shedding light on a longstanding neuroscientific phenomenon known as the cocktail party problem. This attentional focus becomes necessary when you’re in any crowded environment, such as a cocktail party, with many conversations going […]
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When we learn a new skill, the brain has to decide — cell by cell — what to change. New research from MIT suggests it can do that with surprising precision, sending targeted feedback to individual neurons so each one can adjust its activity in the right direction. The finding echoes a key idea from […]
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Expertise isn’t easy to pass down. Take riding a bike: A seasoned cyclist might talk a beginner through the basics of how to sit and when to push off. But other skills, like how hard to pedal to keep balanced, are more intuitive and harder to articulate. This implicit know-how is known as tacit knowledge, […]
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Numerous potential treatments for neurological conditions, including autism spectrum disorders, have worked well in mice but then disappointed in humans. What would help is a non-invasive, objective readout of treatment efficacy that is shared in both species. In a new open-access study in Nature Communications, a team of MIT researchers, backed by collaborators across the […]
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Eight MIT faculty and 22 additional MIT alumni are among 126 early-career researchers honored with 2026 Sloan Research Fellowships by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The fellowships honor exceptional researchers at U.S. and Canadian educational institutions, whose creativity, innovation, and research accomplishments make them stand out as the next generation of leaders. Winners receive a two-year, […]
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The signals that drive many of the brain and body’s most essential functions — consciousness, sleep, breathing, heart rate, and motion — course through bundles of “white matter” fibers in the brainstem, but imaging systems so far have been unable to finely resolve these crucial neural cables. That has left researchers and doctors with little […]
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The ability to use language to communicate is one of things that makes us human. At MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, scientists led by Evelina Fedorenko have defined an entire network of areas within the brain dedicated to this ability, which work together when we speak, listen, read, write, or sign. Much of the […]
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