Neurotechnology

Picower Institute Neuroscientists don't just apply the latest technologies and methods for studying the brain, they also often invent them. To learn more about how researchers here work at, and expand, the frontiers of research, select them under Research Topics and you'll find relevant Picower people, discoveries and events.

Doherty Assistant Professor of Biology

Brady Weissbourd uses jellyfish to study nervous system evolution, development, regeneration, and function.

Research Areas

Evolution, neural systems, Internal states, neuromodulation, development, Single Cell Transcriptomics and Epigenomics

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.

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.

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.

January 24, 2025

Research Findings

Tissue processing advance can label proteins at the level of individual cells across whole, intact rodent brains and other large samples just as fast and uniformly as in dissociated single cells.

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 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.

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.

July 1, 2024

Picower People

With a new Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship in Neuroscience, Assistant Professor Linlin Fan will seek to strengthen understanding of how neural connections change to encode memories of specific locations.

June 13, 2024

Research Findings

A suite of three innovations by an MIT-based team enables high-throughput imaging of human brain tissue at a full range of scales and mapping connectivity of neurons at single cell resolution.

June 7, 2024

Research Findings

New camera chip design allows for optimizing each pixel’s timing to maximize signal to noise ratio when tracking real-time visual indicator of neural voltage

June 4, 2024

Research Findings

A newly described technology improves the clarity and speed of using two-photon microscopy to image synapses in the live brain

Brady Weissbourd

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

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

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

MIT method enables ultrafast protein labeling of tens of millions of densely packed cells in organ-scale tissues

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

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

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

Fellowship enables study of how the brain makes memories of places

Technologies enable 3D imaging of whole human brain hemispheres at subcellular resolution

With programmable pixels, novel sensor improves imaging of neural activity

Microscope system sharpens scientists’ view of neural circuit connections