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.
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, nanoscience and neuroscience, and include a cash award of $1 million in each field. This year’s laureates were selected for their fundamental contributions […]
Dr. Roger Nicoll of the University of California, San Francisco delivered the 2012 Scolnick Prize lecture, entitled “Deconstructing and reconstructing an excitatory synapse,” at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT on Thursday April 19. 2012.
Nancy Kanwisher describes what McGovern researchers are doing to understand the brain basis of autism.
The inaugural Sharp Lecture was given on March 1, 2012 by Okihide Hikosaka of the NIH, a leading expert on brain mechanisms of motivation and learning.
