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.

January 3, 2025

Picower People

President Biden bestowed the nation’s highest scientific honor on Brown, fellow winners, at a White House ceremony.

December 20, 2024

Research Feature

On a biological foundation of ions and proteins, the brain forms, stores, and retrieves memories to inform intelligent behavior

December 10, 2024

Research Findings

Place cells are well known to encode individual locations, but new experiments and analysis indicate that stitching together a “cognitive map” of a whole environment requires a broader ensemble of cells, aided by sleep, to build a richer network over seve

November 21, 2024

Recent Events

At a symposium of the Simons Center for the Social Brain, six speakers described a diversity of recently launched studies aimed at improving understanding of the autistic brain.

November 13, 2024

Research Findings

System developed by MIT and Open Ephys team provides a fast, light, standardized means for combining multiple instruments with minimal hindrance of lab mouse mobility.

October 7, 2024

Research Findings

New study adds evidence that consciousness requires communication between sensory and cognitive regions of the brain’s cortex

September 23, 2024

Research Findings

New statistical models based on rigorous physiological data from more than 100 surgeries provide objective, accurate measures of “nociception,” the body’s subconscious perception of pain.

September 6, 2024

Research Feature

Studying neuromodulators such as serotonin and norepinephrine could help make them better targets for psychiatric or psychedelic drugs

August 21, 2024

Research Findings

In awake mice, researchers found that even low stimulation currents could sometimes still cause electrographic seizures

July 24, 2024

Research Findings

Genomics and lab studies reveal numerous findings, including a key role for Reelin amid neuronal vulnerability, and for choline and antioxidants in sustaining cognition.

July 23, 2024

Picower People

In animals from worms to humans, feelings and drives such as hunger or sleepiness influence behavior. With flexible, long-term support as a newly named HHMI Investigator, Steve Flavell will advance his lab’s studies of exactly how that happens.

July 15, 2024

Research Findings

Propofol, a drug commonly used for general anesthesia, derails the brain’s normal balance between stability and excitability.

Emery N. Brown, innovative neuroscientist, statistician and anesthesiologist earns National Medal of Science

From Molecules to Memory

Study suggests how the brain, with sleep, learns meaningful maps of spaces

New autism research projects represent a broad range of approaches to achieving a shared goal

Open technology platform enables new versatility for neuroscience research with more naturalistic behavior

The way sensory prediction changes under anesthesia tells us how conscious cognition works

Research quantifying “nociception” could help improve management of surgical pain

Better living through brain chemistry

Study assesses seizure risk from stimulating thalamus

Study across multiple brain regions discerns Alzheimer’s vulnerability and resilience factors

HHMI honor will advance Flavell’s studies of how internal brain states arise and affect behavior

Study reveals how an anesthesia drug induces unconsciousness