Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often called Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a group of rare, progressive, neurological diseases that affect neurons responsible for voluntary muscle control. McGovern Investigator H. Robert Horvitz was a principal member of the team that in 1993 identified the first gene to cause familial ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), and he continues to […]
Attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a brain disorder marked by an ongoing pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity that interferes with age-appropriate attention to tasks. Researchers at the McGovern Institute are exploring the mechanisms – from individual circuits to whole brain regions – that allow us to focus our attention on a specific task while filtering […]
Addiction is a chronic, relapsing disorder characterized by compulsive drug-seeking despite harmful consequences. Our scientists and engineers are collaborating on a new initiative to develop a fundamental understanding of the biological underpinnings of addiction and create new scientifically-driven strategies to treat this complex disorder.
Recent graduates Omar Abudayyeh and Jonathan Gootenberg are the inaugural fellows of the McGovern Institute.
We probe the nanoscale and cellular processes that are critical to brain function. Our interests span the neuron, from the biophysics and complex computations conducted in dendrites, to the synapses and neurotransmitters that facilitate messaging between neurons. We study the genes and proteins that support these functions, and the devastating disorders that have been linked […]
Driven by curiosity and therapeutic goals, Anikeeva leaves no scientific stone unturned in her drive to invent neurotechnology. The audience sits utterly riveted as Polina Anikeeva highlights the gaps she sees in the landscape of neural tools. With a background in optoelectronics, she has a decidedly unique take on the brain. “In neuroscience,” says Anikeeva, […]
CRISPR (which stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) is not actually a single entity, but shorthand for a set of bacterial systems that are found with a hallmarked arrangement in the bacterial genome. When CRISPR is mentioned, most people are likely thinking of CRISPR-Cas9, now widely known for its capacity to be re-deployed […]
Developing Connections Martha Constantine-Paton studied the formation and modification of synapses – the interconnections between neurons – in order to understand how experience shapes the wiring of the brain. By studying individual neurons in the visual system of developing animals, she showed that a class of molecules known as NMDA receptors plays an essential role […]
