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This animation illustrates optogenetics — a radical new technology for controlling brain activity with light.

McGovern researchers use optogeneticsto restore vision in blind mice.

Ed Boyden, a member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, develops new strategies for manipulating brain activity. He uses a wide variety of technologies to find new and more potent ways to alter brain function, for both research and therapeutic purposes. A major goal of his current work is to manipulate individual […]

Emilio Bizzi examines how the brain translates our general intentions into the detailed commands needed to control muscle movements. One of his key discoveries is that groups of muscles are activated synergistically by circuits of neurons in the spinal cord. He believes that these synergies represent the fundamental building blocks for assembling a repertoire of […]

Robert Desimone is director of the McGovern Institute and formerly the head of intramural research at the National Institute of Mental Health. Desimone also runs his own lab at the McGovern Institute, where he studies the brain mechanisms underlying attention.

Saxe is featured in the December 2012 issue of Scientific American.

The McGovern Institute faculty comprises one of the most distinguished groups of brain researchers anywhere in the world. Its members include one Nobel laureate, five members of the National Academy of Sciences, and leading experts in many areas of neuroscience. The Institute currently has 18 principal investigators. Along with its 16 full members, these include […]

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 neurons and uses light potentially to control major diseases — all in his quest to ‘solve the brain’.” — […]

This 2-minute video, narrated by McGovern Institute Director Robert Desimone, provides an overview of the Institute including our goals, our research interests, and our accomplishments.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides researchers with a non-invasive method for viewing the human brain in high resolution.