News
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Source: [Picower News, David Orenstein | November 3, 2025] To get back on track after a distraction, the cortex appears to employ a rotating traveling wave, a new study by MIT neuroscientists finds. As surely as the brain is prone to distraction, it can also return its focus to the task at hand. A new […]
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Source: [Anne Trafton | MIT News, October 1, 2025] Sentences that are highly dissimilar from anything we’ve seen before are more likely to be remembered accurately. “You still had to prove yourself.” “Every cloud has a blue lining!” Which of those sentences are you most likely to remember a few minutes from now? If you […]
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Source: [Anne Trafton | MIT News, July 3, 2025] MIT researchers found that low-quality visual input early in life may contribute to the development of key pathways in the brain’s visual system. Incoming information from the retina is channeled into two pathways in the brain’s visual system: one that’s responsible for processing color and fine spatial detail, […]
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Source: [Picower News | July 1, 2025] A first-of-its-kind study in mice reveals that neurons add and shed synapses at a frenzied pace during development to integrate visual signals from the two eyes. Scientists have long known that the brain’s visual system isn’t fully hardwired from the start—it becomes refined by what babies see—but the […]
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Rooted in fundamental curiosity about how the brain works, Picower scientists continue to break new ground in understanding autism and devising treatment strategies Source: [David Orenstein | Picower News, June 16, 2025] None of the faculty members in The Picower Institute is an “autism researcher,” but The Institute has been advancing research on autism spectrum […]
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MIT study finds that an easily measurable brain wave shift may be a universal marker of unconsciousness under anesthesia Source: [Picower News | May 12, 2025] At the level of molecules and cells, ketamine and dexmedetomidine work very differently, but in the operating room they do the same exact thing: anesthetize the patient. By demonstrating […]
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New research on a cytokine called IL-17 adds to growing evidence that immune molecules can influence behavior during illness. Source: [Anne Trafton | MIT News, April 7, 2025] Immune molecules called cytokines play important roles in the body’s defense against infection, helping to control inflammation and coordinating the responses of other immune cells. A growing body of […]
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Associate Professor Evelina Fedorenko is working to decipher the internal structure and functions of the brain’s language-processing machinery. Source: Anne Trafton | MIT News | April 2, 2025 As a young girl growing up in the former Soviet Union, Evelina Fedorenko PhD ’07 studied several languages, including English, as her mother hoped that it would give her […]
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Source: [Picower News | David Orenstein, February 18, 2025] New research adds evidence that learning a successful strategy for approaching a task doesn’t prevent further exploration, even if it reduces performance. Maybe it’s a life hack or a liability, or a little of both. A surprising result in a new MIT study may suggest that […]
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Source: McGovern News | Julie Pryor, January 23, 2025] The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) announced today that McGovern Investigator Evelina Fedorenko will receive a 2025 Troland Research Award for her groundbreaking contributions towards understanding the language network in the human brain. The Troland Research Award is given annually to recognize unusual achievement by early-career researchers within the broad spectrum of […]
