Building on the CRISPR gene-editing system, MIT researchers have designed a new tool that can snip out faulty genes and replace them with new ones, in a safer and more efficient way. Using this system, the researchers showed that they could deliver genes as long as 36,000 DNA base pairs to several types of human […]
Explore our labs, learn about our tools and technologies, and meet some of our brain researchers — all with the click of a mouse. With technical support and guidance from the MIT.nano Immersion Lab, our team took more than 500 panoramic photographs of the McGovern Institute and stitched them together to create this immersive experience, […]
The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) has awarded the Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience to Ila Fiete, professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, associate member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and director of the K. Lisa Yang Integrative Computational Neuroscience Center. The SfN, the world’s largest neuroscience organization, announced […]
When we press our temples to soothe an aching head or rub an elbow after an unexpected blow, it often brings some relief. It is believed that pain-responsive cells in the brain quiet down when these neurons also receive touch inputs, say scientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute, who for the first time have watched this […]
Many children struggle to learn to read, and studies have shown that students from a lower socioeconomic status (SES) background are more likely to have difficulty than those from a higher SES background. MIT neuroscientists have now discovered that the types of difficulties that lower-SES students have with reading, and the underlying brain signatures, are, […]
Our growing understanding of the ways bacteria defend themselves against viruses continues to change the way scientists work and offer new opportunities to improve human health. Ancient immune systems known as CRISPR systems have already been widely adopted as powerful genome editing tools, and the CRISPR toolkit is continuing to expand. Now, scientists at MIT’s […]
Neural networks, a type of computing system loosely modeled on the organization of the human brain, form the basis of many artificial intelligence systems for applications such speech recognition, computer vision, and medical image analysis. In the field of neuroscience, researchers often use neural networks to try to model the same kind of tasks that […]
Researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT have developed a system that can detect a particular RNA sequence in live cells and produce a protein of interest in response. Using the technology, the team showed how they could identify specific cell types, detect and […]
Using a simple set of magnets, MIT researchers have come up with a sophisticated way to monitor muscle movements, which they hope will make it easier for people with amputations to control their prosthetic limbs. In a new pair of papers, the researchers demonstrated the accuracy and safety of their magnet-based system, which can track […]