Two members of the MIT faculty were named Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigators today. Ed Boyden and Feng Zhang join a community of 300 HHMI scientists who are “transforming biology and medicine, one discovery at a time.” Both researchers have been instrumental in recognizing, developing, and sharing robust tools with broad utility that have […]
Two McGovern neuroscientists settle the score on an auditory illusion that’s breaking the internet.
Zhang is one of four MIT professors being recognized for their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.
Institute Professor Ann Graybiel, a professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, is being recognized by the Gruber Foundation for her work on the structure, organization, and function of the once-mysterious basal ganglia. She was awarded the prize alongside Okihide Hikosaka of the National […]
MIT biologists have discovered a function of a gene that is believed to account for up to 40 percent of all familial cases of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Studies of ALS patients have shown that an abnormally expanded region of DNA in a specific region of this gene can cause the disease. In a study […]
The McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT announced today that David J. Anderson of Caltech is the winner of the 2018 Edward M. Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience. He was awarded the prize for his contributions to the isolation and characterization of neural stem cells and for his research on neural circuits that control emotional […]
Four MIT faculty members have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in recognition of their “distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.” MIT’s four new NAS members are: Amy Finkelstein, the John and Jennie S. MacDonald Professor of Economics; Mehran Kardar, the Francis Friedman Professor of Physics; Xiao-Gang Wen, the Cecil and […]
MIT neuroscientists have developed a new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sensor that allows them to monitor neural activity deep within the brain by tracking calcium ions. Because calcium ions are directly linked to neuronal firing — unlike the changes in blood flow detected by other types of MRI, which provide an indirect signal — this […]
Nancy Kanwisher, the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT, has been named a recipient of the 2018 Heineken Prize — the Netherlands’ most prestigious scientific prize — for her work on the functional organization of the human brain. Kanwisher, who is a professor of brain and cognitive sciences and a member of […]
Eight MIT faculty members are among 213 leaders from academia, business, public affairs, the humanities, and the arts elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the academy announced today. One of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies, the academy is also a leading center for independent policy research. Members contribute to academy publications, […]
