A team of MIT researchers has devised a new method for obtaining super-high resolution images from lab microscopes, writes Malcolm Ritter for the AP. The researchers found that by permeating a tissue sample with a specialized version of sodium polyacrylate they were able to enlarge the sample, making them easier to image.
Jen Christensen reports for CNN on new research by Professor John Gabrieli that finds that brain scans can help to determine the best treatment for a given patient. "With this kind of science, we don't have to wait for a failure," explains Gabrieli. "We know what will be the best fit."
“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.
Dr. Tara Swart speaks with Charlotte Clarke of The Financial Times about her work and what inspired her to switch from working in medicine to business. “My mission is to disseminate simple, pragmatic neuroscience-based messages that change the way people work and that translate to tangible financial improvements in business,” says Swart of her work.
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.”
Amy Robinson writes for Scientific American on work being done by MIT researchers in the field of microfluidics and its potential applications in neuroscience. Microfluidics technology is being used "to study stages of development and decipher how variance in chemical and physical processes causes neurons to grow or recede,” Robinson writes.
Melissa Malamut of Boston Magazine writes that a team of MIT researchers has developed a new scaling law to estimate the risk of blast-induced traumatic brain injury. The new method could be useful in helping the military develop more protective helmets and in diagnosing traumatic brain injury, Malamut reports.
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.”
Amy Robinson of Scientific American presents the first installment of a new series on emerging neurotechnologies, which will feature lectures and lab tours from MIT’s Center for Neurobiological Engineering. “The more we know about the brain, the better we are equipped to prevent dysfunctions and fix it when things go wrong,” writes Robinson.
Neel V. Patel writes for Popular Science about the online game Eyewire developed by MIT researchers. The game has allowed neuroscientists to gather data that is helping them to map the eye’s neural network.
Lenny Bernstein of The Washington Post writes about a new study conducted by researchers from MIT and Johns Hopkins University that showed that sightless people, “understand how others see the world in the same way that sighted people do — though they have never personally experienced a single visual image.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Ed Silverman interviews Professor Andrew Lo about his proposal that a public-private partnership could solve funding issues for drugs research and development. “Right now, the risk of failure [in developing an Alzheimer’s treatment] is far too high for any single pharmaceutical company to take on,” Lo explains.
“Based on the current rates of success in creating new drugs for Alzheimer's disease, it could take 260 years until the next one is approved,” writes The Boston Globe’s Carolyn Johnson on the rationale for why Professor Andrew Lo is proposing a new, portfolio-based approach to Alzheimer's research.