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 […]
Cognitive neuroscientists examine the brain processes that come together to inform our thoughts and understanding of the world. Our researchers use a range of approaches, including functional brain imaging and cognitive psychology, to ask fundamental questions about mental processes including how we focus attention, how we process language and music, and how the brain develops […]
The mission of the McGovern Institute is to understand the brain and to apply that knowledge to improve human health and well-being. To accomplish these goals, we study the brain at many levels, across multiple disciplines, and we collaborate with academic, clinical, and industry partners around the world to challenge and probe the unknown. The […]
Fueling psychiatric disorders research The decision to establish the Poitras Center for Psychiatric Disorders Research came to Patricia and James Poitras shortly after hearing Robert Desimone address a meeting of the McGovern Institute Leadership Board in 2006. There, Desimone described a long-range plan for the future of the Institute and the creation of a new […]
On February 28th 2000, MIT’s President Charles M. Vest announced the formation of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, made possible by the vision and generosity of Patrick J. McGovern ’59 and Lore Harp McGovern, whose pledge is one of the largest philanthropic gifts in the history of higher education. The McGoverns envisioned an institute whose ultimate goal would be to […]
The McGovern Institute is a unique interdisciplinary research environment in which postdocs work closely with faculty, honing their scientific skills in preparation for tenure-track positions at major universities or significant research positions in industry. Postdocs are appointed with the title Postdoctoral Fellow or Postdoctoral Associate depending on the type and source of funding. The MIT […]
Making Connections Ian Wickersham develops genetic tools that provide more powerful and precise ways to study the organization of the brain. His lab invents techniques for targeting neurons based on their synaptic connectivity and gene expression patterns in order to cause them to express genes that allow the neurons to be studied and controlled by neuroscientists […]
Personalized Medicine A fundamental problem in psychiatry is that there are no biological markers for diagnosing mental illness or for indicating how best to treat it. Treatment decisions are based entirely on symptoms, and doctors and their patients will typically try one treatment, then if it does not work, try another, and perhaps another. Satrajit […]
Paying Attention Our brains are constantly bombarded with sensory information. The ability to distinguish relevant information from irrelevant distractions is a critical skill, one that is impaired in many brain disorders. By studying the visual system of humans and animals, Robert Desimone has shown that when we attend to something specific, neurons in certain brain […]
Rapid Recognition DiCarlo’s research goal is to reverse engineer the brain mechanisms that underlie human visual intelligence. He and his collaborators have revealed how population image transformations carried out by a deep stack of interconnected neocortical brain areas — called the primate ventral visual stream — are effortlessly able to extract object identity from visual […]
