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The Poitras Center for Affective Disorders Research was founded through a $20M commitment to the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT from Patricia and James Poitras ‘63.

Ann Graybiel studies the basal ganglia, forebrain structures that are profoundly important for normal brain function but are also implicated in Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and addiction.

Tomaso Poggio develops computational models of brain function in order to understand human intelligence and to build intelligent machines that can mimic human performance. Learn more about Tomaso Poggio here.

The McGovern Institute awarded the 2010 Edward M. Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience to Lily and Yuh-Nung Jan of the University of California, San Francisco. In this video, Yuh-Nung Jan delivers the first part of a joint prize lecture entitled, “Dendrite morphogenesis and channel regulation: implications for mental health and neurological disorders.” McGovern Institute director, Bob […]

Alan Jasanoff is developing a new generation of brain imaging technologies to study the neural mechanisms of behavior. In this video press release, Jasanoff discusses his latest findings published in Nature Biotechnology on February 28, 2010. In this study, Jasanoff’s team designed a new MRI sensor that responds to the neurotransmitter dopamine, an achievement that […]

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has revolutionized our understanding of the human brain, but the method is now approaching the limit of its capabilities. Alan Jasanoff hopes to break through this limit and to develop new technologies for imaging the molecular and cellular phenomena that underlie brain function.

Rebecca Saxe shares work that uncovers how the brain thinks about other peoples’ thoughts

Doris and Donald Berkey ’42, SM ’43, of Naples, Florida, have donated $3 million to endow an MIT Professorship in neuroscience, with Robert Desimone, Director of the McGovern Institute, as the first incumbent. Our decision to endow this chair reflects our belief that a better understanding of the brain will help to prevent some of […]

Although the tiny roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans has only 302 neurons in its entire nervous system, studies of this simple animal have significantly advanced our understanding of human brain function because it shares many genes and neurochemical signaling molecules with humans. Now MIT researchers have found novel C. elegans neurochemical receptors, the discovery of which could […]