Systems Neuroscience

Picower Institute scientists seek to understand the complex circuits and processes that the brain constructs and employs so that we can perceive, learn, think, plan, and feel. 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.

Picower Professor of Neuroscience

The Tsai lab is interested in elucidating the pathogenic mechanisms underlying neurological disorders that impact learning and memory by taking a multidisciplinary approach to investigate the molecular, cellular, and circuit basis of neurodegenerative disorders.

Research Areas

Alzheimer's dementia, Down syndrome, Single Cell Transcriptomics and Epigenomics, iPSCs, Brain Rhythms, Neuroimmune interactions, myelination, ApoE, lipid metabolism, Neuronal DNA damage

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

Sherman Fairchild Professor in Neurobiology

Research in the Wilson laboratory focuses on the study of information representation across large populations of neurons in the mammalian nervous system, as well as on the mechanisms that underlie formation and maintenance of distributed memories, and the role of sleep in memory.

Research Areas

hippocampus, place cells, LFP, oscillations, functional connectivity, synchronization, replay, reverse replay

October 16, 2025

Research Findngs

MIT neuroscientists show in a new study that loops of RNA can strongly influence how neurons build circuit connections, or synapses, during the development of the visual system in young mice.

October 14, 2025

Research Findngs

By carefully tracking the formation and maturation of synaptic active zones in fruit flies, MIT scientists have discovered how neural activity helps circuit connections become tuned to the right size and degree of signal transmission

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.

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.

July 1, 2025

Research Findings

A first-of-its-kind study in mice reveals that neurons add and shed synapses at a frenzied pace during development to integrate visual signals from the two eyes.

June 16, 2025

Research Feature

Rooted in fundamental curiosity about how the brain works, Picower scientists continue to break new ground in understanding autism and devising treatment strategies

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 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.

Li-Huei Tsai

Brady Weissbourd

Matthew Wilson

Study finds circular RNA helps drive brain development

Neural activity helps circuit connections mature into optimal signal transmitters

How the brain splits up vision without you even noticing

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

Connect or reject: Extensive rewiring builds binocular vision in the brain

Autism advances

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

Dopamine signals when a fear can be forgotten

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