McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT

Seeing the light: Ed Boyden’s tools for hackers

The November 2012 issue of Wired UK features McGovern neuroscientist, Ed Boyden.

“Ed Boyden, an engineer turned neuroscientist, makes tools for brain hackers. In his lab at MIT, he’s built a robot that can capture individual…

How the brain controls our habits

Habits are behaviors wired so deeply in our brains that we perform them automatically. This allows you to follow the same route to work every day without thinking about it, liberating your brain to ponder other things, such as what to make for…

Calcium reveals connections between neurons

A team led by MIT neuroscientists has developed a way to monitor how brain cells coordinate with each other to control specific behaviors, such as initiating movement or detecting an odor.

The researchers’ new imaging technique, …

Brain’s language center has multiple roles

A century and a half ago, French physician Pierre Paul Broca found that patients with damage to part of the brain’s frontal lobe were unable to speak more than a few words. Later dubbed Broca’s area, this region is believed to …

Mehrdad Jazayeri to join McGovern Institute faculty

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Mehrdad Jazayeri as an Investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. He will join the institute in January 2013, with a faculty appointment as assistant professor in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

Martha Constantine-Paton wins lifetime achievement award

Constantine-Paton, a leading figure in the field of developmental neuroscience, has been awarded the Society for Neuroscience’s Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement Award.

The award recognizes individuals with outstanding career…

Predicting how patients respond to therapy

Social anxiety is usually treated with either cognitive behavioral therapy or medications. However, it is currently impossible to predict which treatment will work best for a particular patient. The team of researchers from MIT, Boston…

Stroke disrupts how brain controls muscle synergies

The simple act of picking up a pencil requires the coordination of dozens of muscles: The eyes and head must turn toward the object as the hand reaches forward and the fingers grasp it. To make this job more manageable, the brain’s motor…

Thinking about others is not child’s play

When you try to read other people’s thoughts, or guess why they are behaving a certain way, you employ a skill known as theory of mind. This skill, as measured by false-belief tests, takes time to develop: In children, it doesn’t…

Ann Graybiel wins Kavli Prize in Neuroscience

Three MIT researchers including Ann Graybiel  are among seven pioneering scientists worldwide named today as this year’s recipients of the Kavli Prizes.

These prizes recognize scientists for their seminal advances in astrophysics,…