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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The way the brain develops can shape us throughout our lives, so neuroscientists are intensely curious about how it happens. A new study by researchers in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT that focused on visual cortex development in mice reveals that an important class of neurons follows a set of rules […]
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A new computational model of the brain based closely on its biology and physiology not only learned a simple visual category learning task exactly as well as lab animals, but even enabled the discovery of counterintuitive activity by a group of neurons that researchers working with animals to perform the same task had not noticed […]
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Our thoughts are specified by our knowledge and plans, yet our cognition can also be fast and flexible in handling new information. How does the well-controlled and yet highly nimble nature of cognition emerge from the brain’s anatomy of billions of neurons and circuits? A study by researchers in The Picower Institute for Learning and […]
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The MIT Siegel Family Quest for Intelligence (SQI), a research unit in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, brings together researchers from across MIT who combine their diverse expertise to understand intelligence through tightly coupled scientific inquiry and rigorous engineering. These researchers engage in collaborative efforts spanning science, engineering, the humanities, and more. SQI seeks […]
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One of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease is the clumping of proteins called Tau, which form tangled fibrils in the brain. The more severe the clumping, the more advanced the disease is. The Tau protein, which has also been linked to many other neurodegenerative diseases, is unstructured in its normal state, but in the pathological […]
Read MoreConsciousness is famously a “hard problem” of science: We don’t precisely know how the physical matter in our brains translates into thoughts, sensations, and feelings. But an emerging research tool called transcranial focused ultrasound may enable researchers to learn more about the phenomenon. The technology has entered use in recent years, but it isn’t yet […]
Read MoreFor decades, scientists with big questions about biology have found answers in a tiny worm. That worm — a millimeter-long creature called Caenorhabditis elegans — has helped researchers uncover fundamental features of how cells and organisms work. The impact of that work is enormous: Discoveries made using C. elegans have been recognized with four Nobel […]
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Even networks long considered “untrainable” can learn effectively with a bit of a helping hand. Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have shown that a brief period of alignment between neural networks, a method they call guidance, can dramatically improve the performance of architectures previously thought unsuitable for modern tasks. Their […]
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All starting from the same DNA, neurons ultimately take on individual characteristics in the brain and body. Differences in which genes they transcribe into RNA help determine which type of neuron they become, and from there, a new MIT study shows, individual cells edit a selection of sites in those RNA transcripts, each at their […]
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In the vision disorder amblyopia (commonly known as “lazy eye”), impaired vision in one eye during development causes neural connections in the brain’s visual system to shift toward supporting the other eye, leaving the amblyopic eye less capable even after the original impairment is corrected. Current interventions are only effective during infancy and early childhood, […]
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“I just can’t make it tonight. You have fun without me.” Across much of the animal kingdom, when infection strikes, social contact shuts down. A new study details how the immune and central nervous systems implement this sickness behavior. It makes perfect sense that when we’re battling an infection, we lose our desire to be […]
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When it comes to brain function, neurons get a lot of the glory. But healthy brains depend on the cooperation of many kinds of cells. The most abundant of the brain’s non-neuronal cells are astrocytes, star-shaped cells with a lot of responsibilities. Astrocytes help shape neural circuits, participate in information processing, and provide nutrient and […]
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With every step we take, our brains are already thinking about the next one. If a bump in the terrain or a minor misstep has thrown us off balance, our stride may need to be altered to prevent a fall. Our two-legged posture makes maintaining stability particularly complex, which our brains solve in part by […]
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Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT can write an essay or plan a menu almost instantly. But until recently, it was also easy to stump them. The models, which rely on language patterns to respond to users’ queries, often failed at math problems and were not good at complex reasoning. Suddenly, however, they’ve gotten a […]
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Taking an audience of hundreds on a tour around the body, seven speakers at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory’s symposium “Circuits of Survival and Homeostasis” Oct. 21 shared their advanced and novel research about some of the nervous system’s most evolutionarily ancient functions. Introducing the symposium that she arranged with a picture of […]
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Humans know they exist, but how does “knowing” work? Despite all that’s been learned about brain function and the bodily processes it governs, we still don’t understand where the subjective experiences associated with brain functions originate. A new interdisciplinary project seeks to find answers to these kinds of big questions around consciousness, a fundamental yet elusive […]
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A new research paper documents the outcomes of five volunteers who continued to receive 40Hz light and sound stimulation for around two years after participating in an MIT early-stage clinical study of the potential Alzheimer’s disease (AD) therapy. The results show that for the three participants with late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, several measures of cognition remained […]
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A new 3D human brain tissue platform developed by MIT researchers is the first to integrate all major brain cell types, including neurons, glial cells, and the vasculature, into a single culture. Grown from individual donors’ induced pluripotent stem cells, these models — dubbed Multicellular Integrated Brains (miBrains) — replicate key features and functions of […]
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Nearly everyone has experienced it: After a night of poor sleep, you don’t feel as alert as you should. Your brain might seem foggy, and your mind drifts off when you should be paying attention. A new study from MIT reveals what happens inside the brain as these momentary failures of attention occur. The scientists […]
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Nervous system functions, from motion to perception to cognition, depend on the active zones of neural circuit connections, or “synapses,” sending out the right amount of their chemical signals at the right times. By tracking how synaptic active zones form and mature in fruit flies, researchers at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at […]
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Computational neuroscientist and singer/songwriter Kimaya (Kimy) Lecamwasam, who also plays electric bass and guitar, says music has been a core part of her life for as long as she can remember. She grew up in a musical family and played in bands all through high school. “For most of my life, writing and playing music […]
Read MoreMore than 300 million people worldwide are living with rare disorders — many of which have a genetic cause and affect the brain and nervous system — yet the vast majority of these conditions lack an approved therapy. Because each rare disorder affects fewer than 65 out of every 100,000 people, studying these disorders and […]
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Understanding how interactions between the central nervous system and the immune system contribute to problems of aging, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, arthritis, and more, can generate new leads for therapeutic development, speakers said at MIT’s symposium “The Neuro-Immune Axis and the Aging Brain” on Sept 18. “The past decade has brought rapid progress in […]
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In a world full of competing sounds, we often have to filter out a lot of noise to hear what’s most important. This critical skill may come more easily for people with musical training, according to scientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, who used brain imaging to follow what happens when people try […]
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The brain divides vision between its two hemispheres — what’s on your left is processed by your right hemisphere, and vice versa — but your experience with every bike or bird that you see zipping by is seamless. A new study by neuroscientists at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT reveals how […]
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Everyone gets headaches. But not everyone gets cluster headache attacks, a debilitating malady producing acute pain that lasts an hour or two. Cluster headache attacks come in sets — hence the name — and leave people in complete agony, unable to function. A little under 1 percent of the U.S. population suffers from cluster headache. […]
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A new study from MIT neuroscientists reveals how rare variants of a gene called ABCA7 may contribute to the development of Alzheimer’s in some of the people who carry it. Dysfunctional versions of the ABCA7 gene, which are found in a very small proportion of the population, contribute strongly to Alzheimer’s risk. In the new […]
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Most people recognize Alzheimer’s disease from its devastating symptoms such as memory loss, while new drugs target pathological aspects of disease manifestations, such as plaques of amyloid proteins. Now, a sweeping new open-access study in the Sept. 4 edition of Cell by MIT researchers shows the importance of understanding the disease as a battle over […]
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The first comprehensive map of mouse brain activity has been unveiled by a large international collaboration of neuroscientists. Researchers from the International Brain Laboratory (IBL), including MIT neuroscientist Ila Fiete, published their open-access findings today in two papers in Nature, revealing insights into how decision-making unfolds across the entire brain in mice at single-cell resolution. […]
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