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.

April 11, 2022

Research Findings

Innovative brain-wide mapping study shows that “engrams,” the ensembles of neurons encoding a memory, are widely distributed, including among regions not previously realized

March 25, 2022

Picower People

Pierre Galletti Award recognizes contributions to neural signal processing, anesthesiology advances

March 14, 2022

Research Findings

A new study suggests that electric fields may represent information held in working memory, allowing the brain to overcome “representational drift,” or the inconsistent participation of individual neurons

March 14, 2022

Research Feature

A Picower Institute primer on ‘plasticity,’ the brain’s amazing ability to constantly adapt to and learn from experience

February 2, 2022

Research Findings

A new deep learning algorithm trained to optimize doses of propofol to maintain unconsciousness during general anesthesia could augment patient monitoring

November 22, 2021

Research Findings

By integrating multiple sensory inputs, a loop of mutual inhibition among a small set of neurons allows worms to switch between long-lasting behavioral states

November 3, 2021

Research Findings

The findings may help explain why some people who lead enriching lives are less prone to Alzheimer’s and age-related dementia

September 20, 2021

Research Feature

How brain circuits integrate many sources of context to flexibly guide behavior

September 3, 2021

Research Findings

Neuroscientists at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital have developed a statistical framework that rigorously describes the brain state changes that patients experience under ketamine-induced anesthesia.

July 26, 2021

Research Findings

The visual cortex stores and remembers individual images, but when they are grouped into a sequence, mice can’t recognize that without guidance from the hippocampus

July 23, 2021

New Research

Long thought of as a generic alarm system, the locus coeruleus may actually be a sophisticated regulator of learning and behavior, an MIT team posits

July 6, 2021

Research Findings

To quickly express genes needed for learning and memory, brain cells snap both strands of DNA in many more places and cell types than previously realized, a new study shows

A single memory is stored across many connected brain regions

Emery Brown earns AIMBE’s highest honor

Neurons are fickle. Electric fields are more reliable for information.

The model remodeler

Research advances technology of AI assistance for anesthesiologists

Feast or forage: Study finds circuit that helps a brain decide

Study links gene to cognitive resilience in the elderly

'What Were you Thinking?'

Statistical model defines ketamine anesthesia’s effects on the brain

Brain’s ‘memory center’ needed to recognize image sequences but not single sights

Grant to help scientists test whether brain region is a key locus of learning

Memory making involves extensive DNA breaking