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.

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.

August 14, 2024

Picower People

Two teens who spent their summer in Picower Institute labs via MIT outreach programs gained exposure to neuroscience they can carry with them to college

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 8, 2024

Picower People

With an eye on implications for regenerative medicine, Assistant Professor Brady Weissbourd will use the support of being named a Searle Scholar to study how jellyfish excel at building and regenerating their neural networks.

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 18, 2024

Picower People

As a newly named Pew Biomedical Scholar, Assistant Professor Sara Prescott and her lab plan to test whether and how neurons have a role in airway remodeling, which goes awry in many diseases.

April 23, 2024

Research Findings

Bursts of brain rhythms with “beta” frequencies control where and when neurons in the cortex process sensory information and plan responses. Studying these bursts would improve understanding of cognition and clinical disorders, researchers write.

April 17, 2024

Research Findings

Thought emerges and is controlled in the brain via the rhythmically and spatially coordinated activity of millions of neurons, scientists argue in a new article. Understanding cognition and its disorders requires studying it at that level.

March 25, 2024

Research Findings

Scientists have now observed how the brain’s place cells stave off inhibitory input in the process of establishing their tuning to specific locations. The study shows that signaling by endocannabinoids is required.

March 6, 2024

Research Findings

Stimulating gamma brain waves may protect cancer patients from memory impairment and other cognitive effects of chemotherapy, a new mouse study suggests.

January 2, 2024

Picower People

Assistant Professor Linlin Fan launches a lab to shine a finely focused, innovative spotlight on the neural basis of encoding knowledge.

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

Talented high schoolers excel while they explore the brain

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

Award will enable detailed study of an organism that constantly adds new neurons

Fellowship enables study of how the brain makes memories of places

Pew award will fund study of neural role in respiratory disease

In the brain, bursts of beta rhythms implement cognitive control

Paper: To understand cognition—and its dysfunction—neuroscientists must learn its rhythms

Plasticity and place: Study shows a key neural mechanism of remembering locations

A noninvasive treatment for “chemo brain”

New Picower Investigator advances optical methods to study learning and memory