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.

October 20, 2025

Research Findngs

When spotting what’s changed from one scene to the next, performance will depend on a low-frequency “theta” brain wave that scans the mental image, a new MIT study shows.

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.

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.

April 7, 2025

Research Findings

New research on a cytokine called IL-17 adds to growing evidence that immune molecules can influence behavior during illness.

Like radar, a brain wave sweeps a cortical region to read out information held in working memory

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

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

Molecules that fight infection also act on the brain, inducing anxiety or sociability