Research Topics

As this gallery of featured people and projects illustrates, Picower Institute scientists study brain structure and function at scales from genes and molecules to cells, circuits and regions. They also study the behaviors and cognitive processes that result, and seek to uncover how disruptions at different scales can result in developmental, psychiatric or neurodegenerative disorders. They employ—and often invent—the newest technologies in their work. To learn more about any of these specific areas, click "Research Topics" above, select areas of interest, and you'll find relevant Picower people, discoveries and events.

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

October 7, 2024

Research Findings

New study adds evidence that consciousness requires communication between sensory and cognitive regions of the brain’s cortex

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.

September 6, 2024

Research Feature

Studying neuromodulators such as serotonin and norepinephrine could help make them better targets for psychiatric or psychedelic drugs

August 21, 2024

Research Findings

In awake mice, researchers found that even low stimulation currents could sometimes still cause electrographic seizures

August 8, 2024

Research Findings

MIT scientists report that gamma frequency light and sound stimulation preserves myelination in mouse models and reveal molecular mechanisms that may underlie the benefit.

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 15, 2024

Research Findings

Propofol, a drug commonly used for general anesthesia, derails the brain’s normal balance between stability and excitability.

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.

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 12, 2024

Research Feature

Emerging evidence shows how brain waves help to knit our internal thoughts and external awareness together into an organized, unified whole

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

The way sensory prediction changes under anesthesia tells us how conscious cognition works

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

Better living through brain chemistry

Study assesses seizure risk from stimulating thalamus

Study reveals ways in which 40Hz sensory stimulation may preserve brain’s ‘white matter’

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

Study reveals how an anesthesia drug induces unconsciousness

Pew award will fund study of neural role in respiratory disease

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

Consciousness