Mark Harnett, an associate professor at MIT, still remembers the first time he saw electrical activity spiking from a living neuron. He was a senior at Reed College and had spent weeks building a patch clamp rig — an experimental setup with an electrode that can be used to gently probe a neuron and measure its electrical activity. “The first time I stuck one of these electrodes onto one of these cells and could see the electrical activity happening in real time on the oscilloscope, I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life. This is the coolest thing I’ve ever ..read more

A new way of imaging the brain with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) does not directly detect neural activity as originally reported, according to scientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research. The method, first described in 2022, generated excitement within the neuroscience community as a potentially transformative approach. But a study from the lab of MIT Professor Alan Jasanoff, reported March 27 in the journal Science Advances, demonstrates that MRI signals produced by the new method are generated in large part by the imaging process itself, not neuronal activity. Jasanoff, a p ..read more

On the surface, the movement disorder amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and the cognitive disorder frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), which underlies frontotemporal dementia, manifest in very different ways. In addition, they are known to primarily affect very different regions of the brain. However, doctors and scientists have noted several similarities over the years, and a new study appearing in the journal Cell reveals that the diseases have remarkable overlaps at the cellular and molecular levels, revealing potential targets that could yi ..read more

A new study of people who speak many languages has found that there is something special about how the brain processes their native language. In the brains of these polyglots — people who speak five or more languages — the same language regions light up when they listen to any of the languages that they speak. In general, this network responds more strongly to languages in which the speaker is more proficient, with one notable exception: the speaker’s native language. When listening to one’s native language, language network activity drops off significantly. The findings suggest there is somet ..read more

Studies at MIT and elsewhere are producing mounting evidence that light flickering and sound clicking at the gamma brain rhythm frequency of 40 hertz (Hz) can reduce Alzheimer’s disease (AD) progression and treat symptoms in human volunteers as well as lab mice. In a new open-access study in Nature using a mouse model of the disease, MIT researchers reveal a key mechanism that may contribute to these beneficial effects: clearance of amyloid proteins, a hallmark of AD pathology, via the brain’s glymphatic system, a recently discovered “plumbing” network parallel to the brain’s blood vessels. “E ..read more

At a time in which scientific research is increasingly cross-disciplinary, Ernest Fraenkel, the Grover M. Hermann Professor in Health Sciences and Technology in MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering, stands out as both a very early adopter of drawing from different scientific fields and a great advocate of the practice today. When Fraenkel’s students find themselves at an impasse in their work, he suggests they approach their problem from a different angle or look for inspiration in a completely unrelated field. “I think the thing that I always come back to is try going around it from the ..read more

Individuals with mild cognitive impairment, especially of the “amnestic subtype” (aMCI), are at increased risk for dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease relative to cognitively healthy older adults. Now, a study co-authored by researchers from MIT, Cornell University, and Massachusetts General Hospital has identified a key deficit in people with aMCI, which relates to producing complex language. This deficit is independent of the memory deficit that characterizes this group and may provide an additional “cognitive biomarker” to aid in early detection — the time when treatments, as they continue ..read more

The secret to the success of MIT’s Simons Center for the Social Brain is in the name. With a founding philosophy of “collaboration and community” that has supported scores of scientists across more than a dozen Boston-area research institutions, the SCSB advances research by being inherently social. SCSB’s mission is “to understand the neural mechanisms underlying social cognition and behavior and to translate this knowledge into better diagnosis and treatment of autism spectrum disorders.” When Director Mriganka Sur founded the center in 2012 in partnership with the Simons Foundation Autism R ..read more

Starting on New Year’s Day, when many people were still clinging to holiday revelry, scores of students and faculty members from about a dozen partner universities instead flipped open their laptops for MIT’s Quantitative Methods Workshop, a jam-packed, weeklong introduction to how computational and mathematical techniques can be applied to neuroscience and biology research. But don’t think of QMW as a “crash course.” Instead the program’s purpose is to help elevate each participant’s scientific outlook, both through the skills and concepts it imparts and the community it creates. “It bro ..read more

Peter Schiller, professor emeritus in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a member of the MIT faculty since 1964, died on Dec. 23, 2023. He was 92. Born in Berlin to Hungarian parents in 1931, Schiller and his family returned to Budapest in 1934, where they endured World War II; in 1947 he moved to the United States with his father and stepmother. Schiller attended college at Duke University, where he was on the soccer and tennis teams and received his bachelor’s degree in 1955. He then went on to earn his PhD with Morton Weiner at Clark University, where he studied cortical inv ..read more