Using a specialized MRI sensor, MIT researchers have shown that they can detect light deep within tissues such as the brain. Imaging light in deep tissues is extremely difficult because as light travels into tissue, much of it is either absorbed or scattered. The MIT team overcame that obstacle by designing a sensor that converts […]
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures changes in blood flow throughout the brain, has been used over the past couple of decades for a variety of applications, including “functional anatomy” — a way of determining which brain areas are switched on when a person carries out a particular task. fMRI has been used to […]
Thank you so much for helping us with our outreach and communications efforts at the McGovern Institute! As a token of our appreciation, we have a collection of McGovern swag for you to choose from. The items are grouped according to levels of volunteer engagement, with descriptions below. BRONZE MERITS are for those who have […]
This year’s holiday video (shown above) was inspired by Ev Fedorenko’s July 2022 Nature Neuroscience paper, which found similar patterns of brain activation and language selectivity across speakers of 45 different languages. Universal language network Over several decades, neuroscientists have created a well-defined map of the brain’s “language network,” or the regions of the brain […]
For a few days in November, the McGovern Institute hummed with invented languages. Strangers greeted one another in Esperanto; trivia games were played in High Valyrian; Klingon and Na’vi were heard inside MRI scanners. Creators and users of these constructed languages (conlangs) had gathered at MIT in the name of neuroscience. McGovern Institute investigator Evelina […]
This story originally appeared in the Winter 2023 issue of BrainScan. __ Many people barely consider how their bodies move — at least not until movement becomes more difficult due to injury or disease. But the McGovern scientists who are working to understand human movement and restore it after it has been lost know that the […]
Bipolar disorder often begins in childhood or adolescence, triggering dramatic mood shifts and intense emotions that cause problems at home and school. But the condition is often overlooked or misdiagnosed until patients are older. New research suggests that machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence, could help by identifying children who are at risk of […]
MIT neuroscientists have discovered that the adult brain contains millions of “silent synapses” — immature connections between neurons that remain inactive until they’re recruited to help form new memories. Until now, it was believed that silent synapses were present only during early development, when they help the brain learn the new information that it’s exposed […]