The Picower Institute is a community of scientists dedicated to understanding the mechanisms that drive learning and memory and related functions such as cognition, emotion, perception, and consciousness. Institute researchers explore the brain at multiple scales, from genes and molecules, to cells and synapses, to circuits and systems, producing novel insights into how disruptions in these mechanisms can lead to developmental, psychiatric, or neurodegenerative disease.

The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory celebrates 20 years since the transformative gift of The Picower Foundation. About 1,700 people participated online or in-person in a daylong celebration featuring talks representing each of the Institute's labs. In the Institute's first 20 years, researchers published more than 1,000 papers and trained about 500 scientists. Learn more about their discoveries over the years.

To confront the crisis of age-related neurodegenerative disease, the Picower Institute announces The Aging Brain Initiative, a far-reaching, highly collaborative effort involving Picower, the MIT School of Science and  colleagues in  the Neurosciences, Bioengineering, Biology, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Health Economics and  Health Policy.  Led by Institute Director Li-Huei Tsai, the ABI's aim is to focus a broad range of research talent on a single goal:  improving quality of life through fundamental research into how the brain ages in health and in decline.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) BRAIN Initiative awards grants to five researchers at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. The grants support teams that are exploring cortical circuits and information flow, new methods for high-speed monitoring of synaptic activity, and technologies for non-toxic trans-synaptic tracing. Spearheaded by President Obama in April 2013, the BRAIN Initiative challenges the nation’s leading scientists to deepen their understanding of the human mind and to discover new ways to treat, prevent, and cure neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, autism, and traumatic brain injury.

A $25 million bequest from the estate of Jeffry Picower helps ensure the long-term health of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory endowment. The gift enables the creation and development of four strategic programs: the Clinical Fellowships in Neuroscience Program, the Picower Neurological Disorder Research Fund, the Junior Faculty Support Fund, and the Symposium Fund.

Professor Li-Huei Tsai is appointed Director of the Picower Institute. Tsai succeeds Professor Mark Bear, who led the Picower Institute for two-and-a-half years. A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the Academia Sinica of Taiwan, Tsai joined the Picower Institute in 2006. Her work as a Principle Investigator has created inroads to understanding abnormalities in brain structure and function that lead to neurological disorders. Tsai announced that her goal is to foster collaborations with colleagues both within and outside the Picower Institute.

Picower Professor of Neuroscience Mark F. Bear succeeds Susumu Tonegawa as the second director of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. Since joining the Picower Institute in 2003, Professor Bear’s work has focused on how the brain changes in response to experience and how specific molecules, synapses, neurons, and circuits contribute to behavior.

Under the new name the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, faculty staff and students take up residence in the new 411,000-square-foot Brain and Cognitive Sciences complex at the northeast corner of the MIT campus—the world’s largest neuroscience research center to date. Renowned architect Charles Correa collaborated with Goody, Clancy & Associates to create this carefully calibrated machine for scientific inquiry. Correa explained that he sought to embody “the gravitas of science” in the design.

A $50 million gift from the Jeffry M. and Barbara Picower Foundation establishes the Picower Center for Learning and Memory, expanding on the work of what was previously known as the MIT Center for Learning and Memory (CLM). The gift, which was the single largest grant from a private foundation in MIT history, funds a new state-of-the-art facility and four endowed professorships. The gift also helps the new Picower Center establish a variety of core facilities, organize international conferences, and sponsor a visiting scholar program.

A National Institute of Mental Health grant is awarded to the Center for Learning and Memory (CLM) at MIT from the Silvio O. Conte Center for Neuroscience Research fund. The Conte Center grant affirms CLM’s capacity to conduct pioneering research with the potential for translation into new methods of diagnosis and treatment for mental illnesses.

RIKEN-MIT Neuroscience Research Center is created within the Center for Learning and Memory (CLM). The new center represents a deepening of the collaboration between MIT and the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research of Saitama, Japan (RIKEN). The RIKEN-MIT center facilitates joint neuroscience research that leverages the unique resources of the two institutions.

The Center for Learning and Memory (CLM) establishes the Menicon Professorship of Neuroscience at MIT with a $2.5 million gift from Menicon Co., Ltd. The gift supports the recruitment of a senior scientist to the CLM to work at the most advanced frontiers of understanding about the nature of the human mind.

A $5 million gift from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation launches the Center for Learning and Memory (CLM) at MIT to explore the largely uninvestigated biology and neuroscience of learning and memory. The new center reflects the Institute’s deep commitment to the basic science of complex brain functions. Nobel laureate Susumu Tonegawa is selected as CLM’s founding director.