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Guardian reporter Hannah Devlin writes about a new study by MIT researchers that shows that strobe lighting can reduce levels of toxic proteins found in Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers found that “exposure to flickering light stimulated brain waves, called gamma oscillations, that are known to be disturbed in Alzheimer’s patients.”
Prof. Earl Miller speaks with Phyllis Korkki of The New York Times about why aging makes learning new skills more difficult. “Your mind’s bandwidth is smaller. You learn at a slower rate because less information is getting in,” explains Prof. Miller. To make learning easier, Miller says it's “important to keep yourself cognitively engaged.”
Writing for The New York Times, Katie Hafner highlights how MIT researchers have identified a region of the brain that they believe could be responsible for producing feelings of loneliness. Hafner explains that “the region, known as the dorsal raphe nucleus, or D.R.N., is best known for its link to depression.”
New research by Prof. Susumu Tonegawa presents the possibility that depression can be alleviated by recalling happy memories, reports Clive Cookson for The Financial Times. The findings suggest, "new ways to treat depression by manipulating memory neurons.”
MIT researchers were able to reverse depression-like behavior by reactivating happy memories, writes Carolyn Gregorie for The Huffington Post. Graduate student and lead author Steve Ramirez “hopes that scientists will one day find a way to prevent depressive symptoms from occurring in the first place.”
Jessica Hamzelou writes for New Scientist that MIT researchers have been able to recover memories using light. The technique could eventually be used to help people with Alzheimer’s or amnesia. Hamzelou writes that Prof. Susumu Tonegawa, hopes to “develop a way to reactivate forgotten memories in people before the brain tissue itself is damaged, as is often the case in dementia.”
USA Today reporter Melissa Pandika spotlights Prof. Kay Tye, highlighting her journey to MIT, her award-winning breakdancing skills and her neuroscience research. Tye’s current work examines how optogenetics can be used to control certain behaviors, such as overeating and anxiety.
Alexandre Stipanovich writes for The Huffington Post about Professor Earl Miller’s research into understanding consciousness. "Some parts of consciousness are very subjective, but the most objective thing about conscious thoughts is that it is a limited capacity,” explains Miller.
Philip Ball of The Guardian speaks with graduate student Steve Ramirez about the potential for neuroscientist to one day be able to replace bad memories with good ones. “I see a world where we can reactivate any kind of memory we like, or erase unwanted memories,” says Ramirez.
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.”
The BBC’s Science Hour highlights new MIT research exploring how emotions are linked to memories. Researchers found that the emotional associations of specific memories could be reversed in mice.
Amina Khan of the Los Angeles Times explores new MIT research into how the brain links memories with positive and negative emotions. “Recording memory is not like playing a tape recorder, but it is a creative process -- sometimes even leading to an entirely false memory,” explains Prof. Susumu Tonegawa.
Boston Magazine reporter Andrea Timpano writes about how MIT researchers have developed a technique to reverse the emotions associated with specific memories in mice. The new technique uses light to manipulate brain cells and control neuron activity.