Memories can be of many types (e.g. places or faces), operate on different timeframes (long- or short-term), and be stored and recalled through distinct processes involving multiple brain regions. The subject of intense interest across the Picower Institute, memory systems are studied widely and in depth.
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.
Computational neuroscience is the study of brain function in terms of the nervous system’s information processing capabilities, such as those exhibited by neurons as they interact in circuits, ensembles and systems via electrical and chemical signals. Computational neuroscience models allow for generating hypotheses about learning and memory, cognition and arousal among other brain functions.
Whether awake, asleep or under anesthesia, the brain operates in various states of consciousness, often for prolonged periods. Picower researchers study the biochemistry and systems that generate and govern consciousness and arousal both to achieve basic understanding and to improve clinical care.
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.
What we learn and remember help make us who we are. By studying how these systems arise from the contributions of specific genes, molecules, cells, synapses, circuits and systems, Picower scientists make discoveries about how we retain and make use of experiences in the world. By better understanding how these processes may break down, they generate innovative potential treatments and diagnostic methods for complex developmental, psychiatric and degenerative brain disorders.
Our desires and fears often govern our actions. Those motivations and behaviors are, in turn, encoded in the brain via circuits that connect different regions. Picower researchers study them in detail to understand how they function and how abnormalities may result in diseases such as addiction.
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.
A developmental disorder with typical onset in young adulthood, schizophrenia affects cognition and behavior, sometimes affecting a person’s understanding of reality. Research in the Picower Institute spans synapses and systems to help better understand the condition and how treatments might be improved.
Parkinson’s disease is associated with a loss of dopamine-producing neurons, resulting in tremor and other difficulties in motor control. Research at the Picower Institute includes studies to understand how cells become susceptible in the disease as the brain ages and on improving therapeutic approaches.