The MIT School of Science recently welcomed 10 new professors, including Ila Fiete in the departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Mathematics, and Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Ila Fiete uses computational and theoretical tools to better understand the dynamical mechanisms and coding strategies that underlie computation in the brain, with a […]
Molecular biologist Feng Zhang has been named a winner of the prestigious Keio Medical Science Prize. He is being recognized for the groundbreaking development of CRISPR-Cas9-mediated genome engineering in cells and its application for medical science. Zhang is the James and Patricia Poitras Professor of Neuroscience at MIT, an associate professor in the departments of Brain […]
The Bert L and N Kuggie Vallee Foundation has named McGovern Institute investigator Mark Harnett a 2018 Vallee Scholar. The Vallee Scholars Program recognizes original, innovative, and pioneering work by early career scientists at a critical juncture in their careers and provides $300,000 in discretionary funds to be spent over four years for basic biomedical research. […]
McGovern Institute scientist wins prize celebrating outstanding and creative achievements made in the life and medical sciences.
Dopamine, a signaling molecule used throughout the brain, plays a major role in regulating our mood, as well as controlling movement. Many disorders, including Parkinson’s disease, depression, and schizophrenia, are linked to dopamine deficiencies. MIT neuroscientists have now devised a way to measure dopamine in the brain for more than a year, which they believe […]
Why is it that motor skills can be gained after paralysis but vision cannot recover in similar ways? – Ajay, Puppala Thank you so much for this very important question, Ajay. To answer, I asked two local experts in the field, Pawan Sinha who runs the vision research lab at MIT, and Xavier Guell, a […]
This is a very interesting question sent to us by Gabriel Castellanos (thank you!) Many of us gesture with our hands when we speak (and even when we do not) as a form of non-verbal communication. How hand gestures are coordinated with speech remains unclear. In part, it is difficult to monitor natural hand gestures […]
Ann Graybiel has recently uncovered the plan underlying development of the complex architecture of the striatum.
Rebecca Saxe and team discuss how face-selective areas of the brain might emerge.
Many patients with neuropsychiatric disorders such as anxiety or depression experience negative moods that lead them to focus on the possible downside of a given situation more than the potential benefit. MIT neuroscientists have now pinpointed a brain region that can generate this type of pessimistic mood. In tests in animals, they showed that stimulating […]
