A team of MIT researchers has found that the brain’s cortical thickness differs between low-income and high-income teenagers, reports Lyndsey Layton for The Washington Post. “The thing that really stands out is how powerful the economic influences are on something as fundamental as brain structure,” said Prof. John Gabrieli.
New York Times reporter Jeneen Interlandi examines Dr. Emile Bruneau’s work studying regional conflicts to better understand how human empathy works. Bruneau explains that he felt that “the most relevant level of analysis for generating social change was the psychological level.”
Karen Hopkin of Scientific American writes about a new method developed by MIT researchers for increasing the size of tissue samples to allow for better observation. Thus far, the researchers have used the new technique to “peer into the brains of mice, fruit flies and zebrafish,” Hopkin explains.
Using a polymer found in diapers that swells on contact with water, Prof. Ed Boyden and his colleagues have developed a method for enlarging tissue samples to allow for better 3-D imaging, writes Jessica Hamzelou for New Scientist. The team can enlarge samples to more than four times their original size, Hamzelou reports.
“A team of MIT researchers found that an existing computer vision system can achieve object recognition as well as humans and other primates,” writes Jamie Ducharme for Boston Magazine. Professor James DiCarlo’s team compared the visual recognition abilities of primates to those of the advanced computer system Super Vision.
Writing for The New York Times, Richard Friedman highlights how MIT researchers examined brain activity in adults with A.D.H.D. They found that “adults who had had A.D.H.D as children but no longer had it as adults had a restoration of the normal synchrony pattern, so their brains looked just like those of people who had never had it.”
Dr, Susan Whifield-Gabrieli discusses the importance of understanding the default mode network (DMN) in the human brain to the study of schizophrenia in a NOVA feature by Allison Eck. “This is first time we’ve found a neural system that actually reveals your inner self,” says Whitfield-Gabrieli.
Tania Lombrozo of NPR writes about MIT Professor Nancy Kanwisher's new video examining the basics of brain imaging. “Readers might be especially interested in Kanwisher's tips for critically evaluating functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies, explained in the video,” writes Lombrozo.
Thomas Burton of The Wall Street Journal writes that MIT researchers were among those awarded the first research grants under President Obama’s new BRAIN Initiative. Burton writes that one of the MIT grants will go toward “determining which exact brain circuits are involved in generating short-term memories that influence decisions.”
Boston Globe reporter Deborah Kotz writes that MIT researchers have been awarded new grants from the National Institutes of Health to further brain research. “Biophysicist Alan Jasanoff received a grant to develop imaging agents for functional MRI imaging that would target the flow of calcium into and out of brain cells,” writes Kotz of one of the MIT grants.
MIT neuroscientists were among the recipients of new grants for brain research from the National Institutes of Health, reports Jon Hamilton for NPR. Hamilton explains that as part of one grant, “Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will try to adapt functional MRI so that it can show the activity of individual brain cells.”
New research by Professor Ann Graybiel may indicate that the FOXP2 gene in humans plays a major role in how we learn speech, writes Chris Higgins for Wired. Mice given the gene were able to learn their way through a maze more quickly than those without it.
Jacqueline Howard of The Huffington Post writes about research by Professor Ann Graybiel that looked at the effect of the human Foxp2 gene in mice. The work could lead to a greater understanding of how the human brain learns speech.
Sharon Begley of Reuters writes about Professor Ann Graybiel’s research on the effect of the human FOXP2 gene on mice. “By isolating the effects of one gene, the work sheds light on its function and hints at the evolutionary changes that led to the unique capabilities of the human brain,” writes Begley.
Research by Professor Ann Graybiel demonstrated that providing mice with the human version of the FOXP2 gene allowed them to learn repetitive patterns more quickly, reports Clare Wilson of The New Scientist. This may demonstrate that the gene plays an important role in how humans learn to speak, says Graybiel.