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A new study from the McGovern Institute shows how interests can modulate language processing in children’s brains and paves the way for personalized brain research. The paper, which appears in Imaging Neuroscience, was conducted in the lab of McGovern Institute Investigator John Gabrieli, and led by senior author Anila D’Mello, a former McGovern postdoctoral fellow […]

On Nov. 10, some of the country’s top memorizers converged on MIT’s Kresge Auditorium to compete in a “Tournament of Memory Champions” in front of a live audience. The competition was split into four events: long-term memory, words-to-remember, auditory memory, and double-deck of cards, in which competitors must memorize the exact order of two decks […]

Dopamine is a powerful signal in the brain, influencing our moods, motivations, movements, and more. The neurotransmitter is crucial for reward-based learning, a function that may be disrupted in a number of psychiatric conditions, from mood disorders to addiction. Now, researchers led by Ann Graybiel, an investigator at MIT’s McGovern Institute, have found surprising patterns […]

Yiming Chen ’24, Wilhem Hector, Anushka Nair, and David Oluigbo have been selected as 2025 Rhodes Scholars and will begin fully funded postgraduate studies at Oxford University in the U.K. next fall. In addition to MIT’s two U.S. Rhodes winners, Ouigbo and Nair, two affiliates were awarded international Rhodes Scholarships: Chen for Rhodes’ China constituency and […]

This story also appears in the Winter 2025 issue of BrainScan.  ___ McGovern investigator Nancy Kanwisher and her team have big questions about the nature of the human mind. Energized by Kanwisher’s enthusiasm for finding out how and why the brain works as it does, her team collaborates broadly and embraces various tools of neuroscience. […]

By analyzing brain scans taken as people watched movie clips, MIT researchers have created the most comprehensive map yet of the functions of the brain’s cerebral cortex. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, the research team identified 24 networks with different functions, which include processing language, social interactions, visual features, and other types of […]

From early development to old age, cell death is a part of life. Without enough of a critical type of cell death known as apoptosis, animals wind up with too many cells, which can set the stage for cancer or autoimmune disease. But careful control is essential, because when apoptosis eliminates the wrong cells, the […]