Systems Neuroscience

Picower Institute scientists seek to understand the complex circuits and processes that the brain constructs and employs so that we can perceive, learn, think, plan, and feel. To learn more about these or other areas of inquiry, select them under Research Topics and you'll find relevant Picower people, discoveries and events.

Mark Bear

Picower Professor of Neuroscience
Bear’s lab studies how experience and deprivation modify synaptic connections in the brain. Experience-dependent synaptic plasticity is the physical substrate of memory and sculpts connections during postnatal development to determine the capabilities and limitations of brain functions.
Research Areas
mGluR5, LTD, LTP, monocular deprivation, habituation, potentiation, amblyopia, visual cortex

Ed Boyden

Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and McGovern Institute, Departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Media Arts and Sciences, and Biological Engineering
Ed Boyden's group develops tools for analyzing and repairing complex biological systems such as the brain, and applies them systematically to reveal ground truth principles of biological function as well as to repair these systems.
Research Areas
optogenetics, neurotechnology, circuits, oscillations, deep brain stimulation

Gloria Choi

Mark Hyman Jr. Career Development Associate Professor, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Choi’s lab studies the interaction of the immune system with the brain and the effects of that interaction on neurodevelopment, behavior and mood.
Research Areas
autism, neuroimmunology, cortex, proprioception, neurodevelopmental disorders

Kwanghun Chung

Investigator in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory
Chung’s interdisciplinary research team develops technologies for holistic understanding of large-scale complex biological systems. Methods including CLARTIY, MAP and SWITCH enable identification of multi-scale functional networks and interrogation of their system-wide, multifactorial interactions.
Research Areas
CLARITY, MAP, SWITCH, neurotechnology, organoids, neural systems

Linlin Fan

Investigator in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory
The goal of the Fan Lab is to decipher the neural codes underlying learning and memory and to identify the physical basis of learning and memory. In this work, the lab innovates and employs all-optical techniques to read out and manipulate neural circuits.
Research Areas
optogenetics, spatial memory, plasticity, synaptic plasticity, all-optical physiology, neurotechnology, voltage imaging

Steven Flavell

Investigator in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory
Neural operations occur in milliseconds, yet the brain generates behaviors that can last hours. Flavell’s lab studies how neural circuits generate sustained behavioral states, and how physiological and environmental information is integrated into these circuits.
Research Areas
neuromodulation, behavior, calcium imaging, C. elegans, gut-brain signaling, feeding states, serotonin

Laura Lewis

Athinoula A. Martinos Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
Lewis develops multimodal approaches for imaging the human brain, and applies them to study the neural circuitry that controls sleep, and the consequences of sleep for brain function.
Research Areas
Sleep, fMRI, EEG, attention, depression, aging, neurodegeneration, thalamus

Earl K. Miller

Picower Professor of Neuroscience
Miller’s lab studies the neural mechanisms of attention, learning, and memory needed for voluntary, goal-directed behavior. The lab explores prefrontal function by employing a variety of techniques including multiple-electrode neurophysiology, psychophysics, pharmacological manipulations, and computational techniques.
Research Areas
oscillations, cognitive control, prefrontal cortex, bayesian modelling, gamma, cognition, working memory

Elly Nedivi

William R. (1964) & Linda R. Young Professor of Neuroscience
Nedivi’s lab investigates the cellular mechanisms of activity-dependent plasticity through studies of synaptic and neuronal remodeling, identification of participating genes, and characterization of the cellular functions of the proteins they encode.
Research Areas
synaptic plasticity, synapse assembly, synapse disassembly, plasticity genes, CPG15, Neuritin, CPG2, SYNE1, visual system, In vivo cellular imaging, inhibitory circuits, Bipolar Disorder

Sara Prescott

Assistant Professor of Biology
The Prescott Lab explores how visceral cues are transduced, encoded and addressed at internal barrier tissues like the airways
Research Areas
sensory neurons, interoception, airway-to-brain signaling, Single Cell Transcriptomics and Epigenomics, calcium imaging, circuits

Mriganka Sur

Newton Professor of Neuroscience
The goal of the Sur laboratory is to understand long-term plasticity and short-term dynamics in circuits of the developing and adult cortex, and to utilize this understanding to discover mechanisms underlying disorders of brain development.
Research Areas
cerebral cortex, plasticity, development, circuits, attention, autism spectrum disorders, Rett syndrome, organoids, neurotechnology, multiphoton imaging, astrocytes

Susumu Tonegawa

Picower Professor of Biology and Neuroscience
With cutting-edge neuroscience techniques, the Tonegawa lab unravels the molecular, cellular, and neural circuit mechanisms that underlie learning and memory. Studies bridge basic science and disease models to causally dissect how memory works and breaks down.
Research Areas
hippocampus, memory consolidation, circuit mapping, neuromodulation, engram, neurotechnology, inception, depression, place cells, amygdala, valence
From: https://picower.mit.edu/research-topics/systems-neuroscience