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 be critical for speech production and some aspects of language comprehension. However, in recent […]
To win at cards, players must understand the beliefs and intentions of their opponents, an ability known as “Theory of Mind.” Rebecca Saxe studies the brain mechanisms that underlie this quintessentially human ability.
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.
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 achievements in neuroscience who have also actively promoted the professional advancement of women in neuroscience. Constantine-Paton will be recognized for her achievements during the Society for […]
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 University (BU) and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) found that the effectiveness of therapy could be predicted by measuring patients’ brain […]
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 cortex has implemented a system of shortcuts. Instead of controlling each muscle […]
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 start appearing until the age of 4 or 5. Several years ago, MIT neuroscientist […]
H. Robert Horvitz has devoted much of his career to studying the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans. Only 1 mm long and containing fewer than 1000 cells, C. elegans has proved to be remarkably informative for studying many biological problems, including the genetic control of development and behavior and the mechanisms that underlie neurodegenerative disease.
