Select Topics
Disorders
Cognition and Motivation
Systems Neuroscience
Molecular and Cellular
Neurotechnology

Mood Disorders

Mood disorders including depression and bipolar disorder are complex in how they affect emotion in the brain. Picower researchers investigate many aspects of these disorders including the circuits, regions and neuromodulators that are relevant in how they are manifested differently in disease.

Sleep

Not merely a restorative process, sleep also has a crucial role in learning and memory. Ongoing studies at the Picower Institute are producing new insights into how memory is processed during sleep and dreaming.

Higher Level Cognition

We are not only capable of learning and reasoning about complex information, we can exert volitional control over these processes. Research at the Picower Institute includes studies to understand the cells, circuits and systems that allow for these capabilities and how abnormalities can disrupt them.

Executive Function

People employ executive functions such as attention and planning to achieve goals and act on motivations, aided by learning and memory. Research at the Picower Institute seeks to understand how the complex coordination of cells, circuits and systems works in the brain to enable such functions.

Neural activity helps circuit connections mature into optimal signal transmitters

October 14, 2025
Research Findngs
By carefully tracking the formation and maturation of synaptic active zones in fruit flies, MIT scientists have discovered how neural activity helps circuit connections become tuned to the right size and degree of signal transmission

Many Mechanisms of Mood

September 29, 2025
Research Feature
Picower Institute studies reveal a number of ways moods emerge in the brain and therefore many potential paths to address depression, PTSD, anxiety and bipolar disorder.

Immune-informed brain aging research offers new treatment possibilities, speakers say

September 29, 2025
Picower Events
Before a packed house, speakers at MIT’s Aging Brain Initiative symposium described how immune system factors during aging contribute to Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other conditions. The field is leveraging that knowledge to develop new therapies

How the brain splits up vision without you even noticing

September 22, 2025
Research Findngs
As an object moves across your field of view, the brain seamlessly hands off visual processing from one hemisphere to the other like cell phone towers or relay racers do, a new MIT study shows.

Study explains how a rare gene variant contributes to Alzheimer’s disease

September 10, 2025
Research Findngs
Lipid metabolism and cell membrane function can be disrupted in the neurons of people who carry rare variants of ABCA7.

Alzheimer’s erodes brain cells’ control of gene expression, undermining function, cognition

September 2, 2025
Research Findngs
Study of 3.5 million cells from more than 100 human brains finds that Alzheimer’s progression—but also resilience to disease—depends on preserving epigenomic stability.

MIT imaging tech promises deepest looks yet into living brain tissue at single-cell resolution

August 7, 2025
Research Findings
By combining several cutting-edge imaging technologies, a new microscope system could enable unprecedentedly deep and precise visualization of metabolic and neuronal activity, potentially even in humans.

Study finds key role for non-neural brain cells in processing vision

July 22, 2025
Research Findings
MIT researchers employed a novel application of tools and analysis to show that astrocytes ensure neural information processing by maintaining ambient levels of the neurotransmitter chemical GABA.