January 2015

Together, obesity and Type 2 diabetes rank among our nation’s greatest health problem, and they largely result from what many call an “addiction” to sugar. But solving this problem is more complicated than solving drug addiction, because it…

In findings that may lead to new treatments for cognitive disorders, researchers at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory zero in on how the brain forms memories of what has been seen. In a paper appearing this week in the online…

The human brain’s complexity makes it extremely challenging to study — not only because of its sheer size, but also because of the variety of signaling methods it uses simultaneously. Conventional neural probes are designed to record a…

Beginning with the invention of the first microscope in the late 1500s, scientists have been trying to peer into preserved cells and tissues with ever-greater magnification. The latest generation of so-called “super-resolution” microscopes…

The first week of the new year brought smatterings of undergraduates returning to the MIT campus after the holidays — and 54 new faces were among them. These students traveled from across the country to attend the annual Quantitative…

Several genetic disorders cause intellectual disability and autism. Historically, these genetic brain diseases were viewed as untreatable. However, in recent years neuroscientists have shown in animal models that it is possible to reverse…