Cognition and Motivation

Picower Institute scientists study behaviors and cognitive processes including learning, memory, emotion, reasoning and consciousness. 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.

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.

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.

June 9, 2025

New Research

Campuswide collaboration sparks new research to develop assistive technology, enhance interventions, decipher brain biochemistry, advance big data analysis, and assess the public’s understanding of dementia risk and protective factors.

May 12, 2025

Research Findings

MIT study finds that an easily measurable brain wave shift may be a universal marker of unconsciousness under anesthesia

May 12, 2025

Research Findings

Why does the brain split visual spatial perception between its hemispheres? A new review examines the advantages and trade-offs, and how the brain ultimately makes vision feel seamless.

April 28, 2025

Research Findings

Study shows how a dopamine circuit between two brain regions enables mice to extinguish fear after a peril has passed.

April 24, 2025

Research Findngs

Study provides new evidence that sensory stimulation of gamma-frequency brain rhythm may promote broad-based restorative neurological health response.

April 22, 2025

Picower People

Assistant Professor Linlin Fan will apply her lab’s precise “all-optical” techniques to study how serotonin might influence plasticity in memory, and whether psychedelics affect that.

April 21, 2025

Research Findings

Clinical trial finds several outcomes improved for young children when an anesthesiologist observed their brain waves to guide dosing of sevoflurane during surgery.

April 8, 2025

Research Findings

Upon infection, the C. elegans worm reshuffles the roles of brain cells and flips the functions of some of the chemicals it uses to regulate behavior.

March 14, 2025

Research Feature

The field is called neuroscience, but neurons alone can’t operate your brain. Research is revealing how non-neural cells indispensably contribute to function, and why their roles can make them promising treatment targets in disease.

February 18, 2025

Research Findings

New research adds evidence that learning a successful strategy for approaching a task doesn’t prevent further exploration, even if it reduces performance.

Many Mechanisms of Mood

How the brain splits up vision without you even noticing

Aging Brain Initiative seed grants fund five new projects to address neurodegenerative disease

Different anesthetics, same result: unconsciousness by shifting brainwave phase

The how and why of the brain’s division across hemispheres

Dopamine signals when a fear can be forgotten

In Down syndrome mice, 40Hz light and sound improve cognition, neurogenesis, connectivity

With Searle Scholar award, Fan will study serotonin role in memory

In kids, EEG monitoring of consciousness safely reduces anesthetic use

A simple animal’s response to sickness highlights the nervous system’s surprising degrees of flexibility

A neuron’s neighbors

Even after learning the right idea, humans and animals still seem to test other approaches, study suggests