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Fifteen MIT scientists receive NIH BRAIN Initiative grants
Today, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced their first round of BRAIN Initiative award recipients. Six teams and 15 researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were recipients. Elly Nedivi, Picower Institute principal investigator and professor in BCS and the Department of Biology, leads a team studying new methods for high-speed monitoring of sensory-driven…
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MIT Neurotech: Journey Through the Brain
Journey into the inner territory of thinking, feeling and perceiving as we reveal how next generation neurotechnologies are revolutionizing our understanding of the brain. A new video and blog will be released each week on Scientific American from Sept 25 to Dec 18. MIT Neurotech will overview a dozen field-leading technologies. This series aims to familiarize…
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Journey Through the Brain: Multiphoton Microscopy
It’s a Saturday and you’re on vacation, looking out over the beautiful blue Pacific Ocean from the windy cliffs of Big Sur. You breathe in cool, fresh salty air. A thunderous pummel of great waves stirs neural networks in your brain and suddenly you find yourself wondering what lies submerged beneath the foaming sea. Seals…
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Clustered Dynamics of Inhibitory Synapses and Dendritic Spines in the Adult Neocortex
A key feature of the mammalian brain is its capacity to adapt in response to experience, in part by remodeling of synaptic connections between neurons. Excitatory synapse rearrangements have been monitored in vivo by observation of dendritic spine dynamics, but lack of a vital marker for inhibitory synapses has precluded their observation. Here, we simultaneously…
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Inhibitory and Excitatory Synapse Dynamics in the Brain
The brain adapts to the environment in part by persistently modifying and rearranging the diverse synaptic connections between neurons. These changes include strengthening or weakening existing links, as well as forming and eliminating synapses — long-term adjustments that are required for learning and memory. Since excitatory synapses on excitatory neurons are localized to small protrusions…
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Lecture: Architecture of the Brain
In this lecture Elly Nedivi provides an overview on the basics of brain anatomy, working her way up the spinal column to the deepest recesses of the cerebral cortex. Using vivid slides, we learn that physically distinguishable areas of the brain are responsible for specific functions, and that you can, for instance, build maps of…
