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

"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...

"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...

🙌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...

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

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

As the lab of Li-Huei Tsai has learned how different brain cells mishandle lipid molecules in Alzheimer’s disease, members have used that knowledge to develop possible treatments picower.mit.edu/news/focus-f... #Alzheimer #neuroscience #brain @mitbcs.bsky.social

Congratulations to our newest PhD, Di Kang, who defended her thesis today: "State-dependent properties of brain-wide activity in freely behaving C. elegans" bcs.mit.edu/events/di-ka... #neuroscience @mitbcs.bsky.social

📰This just in! The FINGERPRINT team has now advanced to the finals at the ADPD Conference in Copenhague, Denmark in March 2026.

Interested in a grad or PhD program in molecular, cellular, or systems neuroscience, cognitive science, computational neuroscience, or neuroengineering? MIT's Research Scholars postbac could be right for you. Applications open today! bcs.mit.edu/postbac1

Thanks! And check out our new review on mixed selectivity, please and thanks. doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...

A new MIT study illustrates how the brain’s executive control center tailors messages via specific circuits with other brain regions to influence them with information about behavior and internal feelings picower.mit.edu/news/prefron... @mitbcs.bsky.social #neuroscience

MIT researchers have discovered how an immune system molecule triggers neurons in a specific brain circuit to shut down social behavior amid infection. picower.mit.edu/news/too-sic... @mitbcs.bsky.social #Neuroscience #behavior

MIT neurobiologists tracked how >200 motor neurons in fruit flies each edited their RNA, cataloging 100s of target sites and varying editing rates. Scores of edits altered proteins involved in neural communication and function. picower.mit.edu/news/rna-edi...

A new study in mice shows that if the retina of an amblyopic eye is temporarily anesthetized, the brain’s visual response to the eye can be restored even in adulthood. picower.mit.edu/news/mit-stu... #neuroscience #vision #amblyopia @mitbcs.bsky.social

The science of consciousness Through the MIT Consciousness Club, professors Matthias Michel and Earl Miller are exploring how neurological activity gives rise to human experience. news.mit.edu/2025/science... #neuroscience

Heard at #SfN25 from @earlkmiller.bsky.social: Cognition and consciousness emerge from the dynamic organization of the cortex produced by traveling brain waves performing analog computations. picower.mit.edu/news/brain-w... #neuroscience #consciousness #cognition @mitbcs.bsky.social

In 2023 the lab of Steve Flavell modeled and mapped how neurons across the brain of a C. elegans worm encode its behaviors. Excited to see that paper now featured here: www.thetransmitter.org/community/th... by @thetransmitter.bsky.social #neuroscience

One of the most-viewed PNAS articles in the last week is “Engineered 3D immuno-glial-neurovascular human miBrain model.” Explore the article here: https://ow.ly/q1U350XmIwf For more trending articles, visit https://ow.ly/sweo50XmIw6.

We’re proud to be part of this new @broadinstitute.org effort! In this Q&A Picower researchers Sara Prescott and Ravi Raju describe the project, how they’re involved, and the research they’re doing: picower.mit.edu/news/qa-pico...

To get back on track after a distraction, the brain appears to employ a rotating traveling wave, a new study by the lab of @earlkmiller.bsky.social finds. picower.mit.edu/news/after-d... @mitbcs.bsky.social #neuroscience #cognition

New research shows attention lapses due to sleep deprivation coincide with a flushing of fluid from the brain — a process that normally occurs during sleep. news.mit.edu/2025/your-br...

At our Fall Symposium, "Circuits of Survival and Homeostasis," seven speakers from around the country convened to describe some of the latest research on the neural mechanisms that we need to survive and thrive. picower.mit.edu/news/symposi... #neuroscience @mitbcs.bsky.social

📃Three late-onset #Alzheimers patients who received 40Hz sensory stimulation for ~2 years performed significantly better on several assessments than comparable AD patients outside MIT's clinical study of the potential therapy. picower.mit.edu/news/small-s... #neuroscience @mitbcs.bsky.social

Excited that an MIT-based team is one of 10 (out of ~200) to advance to the semi-finals! Learn about our project, FINGERPRINT: An agentic AI that will link discovery, prevention and therapy by reasoning across multiple biological and clinical data sets. picower.mit.edu/news/mit-bas...

New paper: Working memory readout varies with frontal theta rhythms. A theta traveling wave swept across the frontal cortex like radar, modulating performance of a working memory task. Because cognition is rhythmic. www.cell.com/neuron/abstr... #neuroscience @picowerinstitute.bsky.social

When spotting what’s changed from one scene to the next, performance will depend on a low-frequency “theta” brain wave that scans the mental image, a new MIT study in @cp-neuron.bsky.social shows. picower.mit.edu/news/radar-b... #neuroscience #cognition

Cultured from induced pluripotent stem cells, ‘miBrains’ integrate all major brain cell types and model brain structures, cellular interactions, activity, and pathological features. picower.mit.edu/news/mit-inv... #neuroscience

MIT neuroscientists show in a new study that loops of RNA can strongly influence how neurons build circuit connections, or synapses, during the development of the visual system in young mice. picower.mit.edu/news/study-f... #neuroscience @mitbcs.bsky.social

MIT scientists have discovered how neural activity helps brain circuit connections become tuned to the right size and degree of signal transmission in fruit fly models. picower.mit.edu/news/neural-... #neuroscience

🧠A week from today, join us at MIT for "Circuits of Survival and Homeostasis." It will be a fascinating day of talks about the links between body and brain. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Our labs' studies have revealed a number of ways moods emerge in the brain and therefore are providing potential paths to address depression, PTSD, anxiety and bipolar disorder. Learn more in our Fall newsletter cover story. picower.mit.edu/news/many-me... #neuroscience #depression #anxiety #bipolar

Visually observing neural activity in freely moving animals requires identifying and tracking moving cells. In @elife.bsky.social the Flavell lab describes deep neural networks to enable this in a nematode worm (and applies some to jellyfish too!). elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre... #neuroscience

Congratulations to Linlin Fan on earning a BBRF Young Investigator grant! 'Using all-optical methods, Fan’s lab will study whether and how serotonin modulates plasticity. bbrfoundation.org/content/brai... #neuroscience #memory

Register now for "Circuits of Survival and Homeostasis" on 10/21! Seven talks will cover how brain-body circuits monitor, regulate, and repair fundamental physiological functions, offering insights into their mechanisms and potential therapeutic targets. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... #neuroscience

Before a packed house, speakers at MIT’s Aging Brain Initiative symposium 9/18 described how immune system factors during aging contribute to #Alzheimers, #Parkinsons and other conditions. The field is leveraging that knowledge to develop new therapies. picower.mit.edu/news/immune-...

New paper! Evidence for an active handoff between hemispheres during target tracking www.jneurosci.org/content/earl... #neuroscience

As an object moves across your field of view, the brain seamlessly hands off visual processing from one hemisphere to the other like cell phone towers or relay racers do, a new study by @earlkmiller.bsky.social in @sfnjournals.bsky.social shows. picower.mit.edu/news/how-bra... #neuroscience

A new study from MIT neuroscientists reveals how rare variants of a gene called ABCA7 may contribute to the development of #Alzheimers in some of the people who carry it. picower.mit.edu/news/study-e... @mitbcs.bsky.social #neuroscience

🫁↔️🧠 A review by Sara Prescott's lab lays out the latest airway-brain circuits research and makes the case that "ongoing research promises new insights into airway disease mechanisms and the neural basis of breathing-related behaviors." www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #biology #neuroscience

How do neurons sense (or get tricked by) the bacteria in the microbiome? A new preprint from the lab of Steve Flavell led by Cassi Estrem identifies chemical cues that trigger neurons in C. elegans models. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #neuroscience #microbiome @mitbcs.bsky.social

Excited (!) for our investigator Brady Weissbourd who will study how jellyfish larvae sense and use environmental cues to explore their world and decide where to settle, offering insights into marine population dynamics, invasive species control, and the neural basis of decisions in early life.

A sweeping study by MIT researchers shows the importance of understanding #Alzheimers disease as a battle over how well brain cells regulate the expression of their genes. picower.mit.edu/news/alzheim... #neuroscience #epigenomics @mitbcs.bsky.social @csail.mit.edu

Don't skip the textbook section!

In The Transmitter's reading list, we highlight the most anticipated upcoming neuroscience books and other notable 2025 releases. Featuring titles by @okaysteve.bsky.social, @dr-brein.bsky.social, @nicolecrust.bsky.social,‬ Xiao-Jing Wang and many more. By @franciscorr25.bsky.social bit.ly/45MvK41