The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT

From robots to brain games, new tools in the fight against Alzheimer’s Technology is opening new paths for patients living with Alzheimer’s disease.

Last night @wcvb5.bsky.social aired an update on local technologies to help people with Alzheimer's, including by Li-Huei Tsai's lab www.wcvb.com/article/alzh...

Immune and Nervous Systems Shut Down Socializing When Sick This social isolation helps curb the spread of disease across species, researchers found.

This social isolation helps curb the spread of disease across species, researchers found. vist.ly/4qg98

Is The Brain an Analog Computer? Consciousness as Dynamic Brainwave Organization | Earl Miller YouTube video by Mind-Body Solution

Is The Brain an Analog Computer? Consciousness as Dynamic Brainwave Organization | Earl Miller Mind-Body Solution podcast.
youtu.be/vZ1B-MvGMgw?...
#neuroscience

miR126-mediated alteration of vascular integrity in Rett syndrome - Molecular Psychiatry Molecular Psychiatry - miR126-mediated alteration of vascular integrity in Rett syndrome

Study in Molecular Psychiatry: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In Rett syndrome, leaky brain blood vessels traced to microRNA MIT neuroscientists have found that either of two genetic mutations that cause Rett syndrome undermine the structural integrity of developing blood vessels. By showing that the problem derives from ov...

MIT neuroscientists have found that mutations that cause Rett syndrome undermine the structural integrity of developing blood vessels. By showing that the problem derives from overexpression of a microRNA,the new study points to a potential treatment. picower.mit.edu/news/rett-sy... #neuroscience

The glassy entrance to the Picower Institute's building is faced by a giant snow pile yards away. In the middle are clear dry pavers.

Wow, that was a lot of snow! ❄ Snow much snow. But quick work by MIT Facilities Grounds Services has pushed the wall back from the doors so we'll be back to neurosciencing tomorrow! Photo by Layla Gonzalez.

Deep neural networks to register and annotate cells in moving and deforming nervous systems New machine vision tools are used to align densely packed cells recorded from live, deforming tissues and automatically annotate the identities of the recorded cell types.

Full study in @elife.bsky.social by the labs of Steven Flavell and Brady Weissbourd elifesciences.org/articles/108...

As worms and jellyfish wriggle, new AI tools track their neurons Three new neural network-based tools enable fast, accurate alignment and annotation of images even in very wiggly subjects. The tools might offer a way to automate cell tracking in other imaging datas...

Three new neural network-based tools enable fast, accurate alignment and annotation of images even in very wiggly subjects🪱🪼. The tools might offer a way to automate cell tracking in other imaging datasets, too. picower.mit.edu/news/worms-a... #neuroscience #AI @mitbcs.bsky.social

Careers

🧠 If you are looking to work in #neuroscience #research, check out and bookmark our #careers page right now because we have 10 ‼️ openings listed (and more to come). picower.mit.edu/about/careers

Neuroblox

Innovations and Inventions at @picowerinstitute.bsky.social Neuroblox
picower.mit.edu/innovations-...
#neuroscience

Sloan Fellowship will help Fan advance technology to study how brain circuits change amid learning Linlin Fan uses innovative optical tools to precisely investigate how connections change among neurons during memory formation. With Sloan Foundation support, she plans to give the technology a signif...

Congratulations Linlin Fan, a new Sloan Foundation research fellow! Fan uses innovative optical tools to investigate how connections change among neurons during memory formation. The fellowship will help her give the technology a big upgrade picower.mit.edu/news/sloan-f... #Neuroscience

Matt Wilson gestures as he speaks to people seated in a stadium style auditorium

Earl Miller stands in front of a podium and a huge screen as he speaks to a large audience

Takato Honda and a museum guide stand on either side of a metal maze with a tiny mechanical mouse. A crowd of onlookers is in the foreground

The band clever hans (two guitars, drums and a lead singer) stands before a dark screen and plays for an audience in the foreground

🎉We (and 500 fellow local residents) had an awesome time MIT Museum's After Dark last night. @earlkmiller.bsky.social and Matt Wilson's talks anchored the "Memory Lab" theme along with demos (including one by Takato Honda), and Earl and Steve Flavell's band Clever Hans!

Tomorrow night After Dark at the MIT Museum
It's gonna be geeky cool fun.
Matt Wilson and I will tell you about minds and memory. Clever Hans will play songs of the mind. And perogies and beer!
tickets.mitmuseum.org/events/019b3...

A human electrophysiological signature of Fragile X pathophysiology is shared in V1 of Fmr1-/y mice - Nature Communications Kornfeld-Sylla et al reveal how alpha brainwaves are altered in children and adults with Fragile X Syndrome (FXS) and find parallel changes in alpha-like rhythms in juvenile and adult FXS model mice, ...

New study in Nature Communications: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Identifying a new biomarker for treatment studies, a collaboration centered at MIT discovered that mice modeling fragile X syndrome exhibit the same pattern of differences in low-frequency brain waves as human patients. picower.mit.edu/news/fragile... @mitbcs.bsky.social

Probabilistic mapping and automated segmentation of human brainstem white matter bundles | PNAS Brainstem white matter (WM) bundles are essential conduits for neural signals that modulate homeostasis and consciousness. Their architecture forms...

Full study in @pnas.org: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Two panels show front and side cross sections of a brain in greyscale. In the bottom center of each image,several colorful banana-shaped regions are highlighted in different colors.

Opening a new window on the brainstem, AI algorithm enables tracking of its vital white matter pathways picower.mit.edu/news/opening... @mitbcs.bsky.social #neuroscience #neurology #radiology

CURE ALZHEIMER’S FUND LAUNCHES BRAIN AGING CONSORTIUM TO DECODE HOW AGING SHAPES ALZHEIMER’S RISK – Cure Alzheimer's Fund Wellesley, Mass. — (February 5, 2026) — Cure Alzheimer’s Fund (CureAlz) today announced the establishment of the Brain Aging Consortium, bringing

Our director Li-Huei Tsai is part of a new consortium, organized by CureALz, to uncover biological mechanisms driving healthy and diseased brain aging: curealz.org/news-and-eve... #AlzheimersDisease #aging #brain

New discovery! Value-based decisions reorganize neural state space. Options are first encoded in orthogonal subspaces Then the selected option rotates into a "readout subspace".
Neural subspace reorganization reflects value-based decision making.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
#neuroscience

This Thursday at noon. Join us (over Zoom) for the MIT Consciousness Club.
George Mashour (University of Michigan Medical School) - "Consciousness and the Dying Brain"
sites.google.com/view/mit-con...
#neuroscience

The jellyfish Clytia hemisphaerica - Nature Methods The jellyfish Clytia hemisphaerica has long been established as a model for studying embryogenesis and gametogenesis because of its transparency, simple tissue architecture and evolutionary position. ...

"Tiny, transparent and genetically tractable, these jellyfish are an excellent system to explore diverse biological questions." A new review in Nature Methods introduces Clytia hemisphaerica as a model organism for #biology and #neuroscience. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Cortical somatostatin innervation follows a unique experience-independent developmental trajectory Despite the critical role of inhibition in regulating developmental plasticity, there are significant gaps in our understanding of inhibitory synapse development, particularly for the vast majority of...

Research study in @sfnjournals.bsky.social by the lab of Elly Nedivi: www.jneurosci.org/content/earl...

How a unique class of neurons may set the table for brain development A new MIT study finds that somatostatin-expressing neurons follow a unique trajectory when forming connections in the brain’s visual cortex that may help establish the conditions needed for sensory ex...

"They are certainly in the right place at the right time to sculpt cortical circuitry at a crucial developmental stage" picower.mit.edu/news/how-uni... #neuroscience #brain @mitbcs.bsky.social

New in Cell: “CyCLoPs” enables scientists to see when different cell types respond to cytokines in vivo. The @harvardmed.bsky.social & MIT team demonstrates two applications: cells responsive to IFN-γ or IL-17A particularly after bacterial (SFB) exposure. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Eighteen MIT faculty honored as “Committed to Caring” for 2025-27 Eighteen MIT professors were selected as “Committed to Caring” for 2025-27. These advisors encourage their students, advocate for meaningful research, and participate in their educational journey from...

🙌Congratulations to Picower Institute faculty members Sara Prescott, Laura Lewis and the 16 other MIT faculty honored for their exceptional mentorship! news.mit.edu/2026/mit-fac...

Full study: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Biology-based brain model matches animals in learning, enables new discovery A new ‘biomimetic’ model of brain circuits and function at multiple scales produced naturalistic dynamics and learning, and even identified curious behavior by some neurons that had gone unnoticed in ...

A new ‘biomimetic’ model of brain circuits and function at multiple scales produced naturalistic dynamics and learning, and even identified curious behavior by some neurons that had gone unnoticed in real-brain data.
picower.mit.edu/news/biology...
@earlkmiller.bsky.social #neuroscience

In Current Biology, the lab of @earlkmiller.bsky.social provides new evidence that the brain recruits and controls ad hoc groups of neurons for cognitive tasks by applying brain waves to patches of the cortex picower.mit.edu/news/flexibl... #neuroscience #cognition #brain

🧠Happy holidays from all of us at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory! Best wishes for 2026 as we look back at 2025. #neuroscience #brain

The next revolution in neuroscience is happening outside the lab By tracking brain activity as primates move freely in the wild, neuroethology could reshape what we think we know about our own minds.

Do we need to study animals in the wild to fully understand the brain? Maybe. OTOH, I sit in front a computer all day.
bigthink.com/neuropsych/n...
#neuroscience