Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Breaking down the Parkinson's pathway: How affected brain cells respond during different behavioral tasks
The key hallmark of Parkinson's disease is a slowdown of movement caused by a cutoff in the supply of dopamine to the brain region responsible for coordinating movement. While scientists have understood this ...
Neuroscience
Mar 13, 2013 |
4 / 5 (2) |
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3 Questions: MIT biologist on new resveratrol study
In the early 1990s, MIT professor Leonard Guarente discovered that sirtuins, a class of proteins found in nearly all animals, protect against the effects of aging in yeast; similar effects have since been ...
Medical research
Mar 07, 2013 |
4.7 / 5 (6) |
2
How the brain loses and regains consciousness (w/ video)
Since the mid-1800s, doctors have used drugs to induce general anesthesia in patients undergoing surgery. Despite their widespread use, little is known about how these drugs create such a profound loss of ...
Neuroscience
Mar 04, 2013 |
4.9 / 5 (8) |
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The relationship between child's play and scientific exploration
Laura Schulz, an associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, has always been interested in learning and education. At the age of 6, she tried teaching her 3-year-old sister to read, an effort ...
Psychology & Psychiatry
Feb 14, 2013 |
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Imaging fish in 3-D : Automated system for high-speed analysis of vertebrate larvae could aid drug development (w/ Video
Zebrafish larvae—tiny, transparent and fast-growing vertebrates—are widely used to study development and disease. However, visually examining the larvae for variations caused by drugs or genetic mutations is an imprecise, ...
Medical research
Feb 13, 2013 |
4 / 5 (1) |
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Bringing a new perspective to infectious disease
Studying infectious diseases has long been primarily the domain of biologists. However, as part of the Ragon Institute, MIT engineers and physical scientists are joining immunologists and physicians in the ...
HIV & AIDS
Feb 08, 2013 |
5 / 5 (1) |
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Some cancer mutations slow tumor growth
A typical cancer cell has thousands of mutations scattered throughout its genome and hundreds of mutated genes. However, only a handful of those genes, known as drivers, are responsible for cancerous traits ...
Cancer
Feb 04, 2013 |
5 / 5 (1) |
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Long non-coding RNA molecules necessary to regulate differentiation of embryonic stem cells into cardiac cells
When the human genome was sequenced, biologists were surprised to find that very little of the genome—less than 3 percent—corresponds to protein-coding genes. What, they wondered, was all the rest of ...
Medical research
Jan 25, 2013 |
5 / 5 (2) |
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Discovery that some seizures arise in glial cells could offer new targets for epilepsy treatment
Epileptic seizures occur when neurons in the brain become excessively active. However, a new study from MIT neuroscientists suggests that some seizures may originate in non-neuronal cells known as glia, which ...
Neuroscience
Jan 16, 2013 |
5 / 5 (2) |
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Possible role for Huntington's gene discovered
About 20 years ago, scientists discovered the gene that causes Huntington's disease, a fatal neurodegenerative disorder that affects about 30,000 Americans. The mutant form of the gene has many extra DNA ...
Genetics
Jan 16, 2013 |
5 / 5 (3) |
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Tiny tools help advance medical discoveries: Researchers are designing tools to analyze cells at the microscale
To understand the progression of complex diseases such as cancer, scientists have had to tease out the interactions between cells at progressively finer scales—from the behavior of a single tumor cell in ...
Medical research
Jan 08, 2013 |
5 / 5 (1) |
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Improving the accuracy of cancer diagnoses: New spectroscopy technique could help doctors better identify breast tumors
Tiny calcium deposits can be a telltale sign of breast cancer. However, in the majority of cases these microcalcifications signal a benign condition. A new diagnostic procedure developed at MIT and Case Western ...
Cancer
Jan 03, 2013 |
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The health-insurance markets of the (very near) future
With the recent launch of MIT's Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, MIT News examines research with the potential to reshape medicine and health care through new scientific knowledge, novel tr ...
Health
Jan 02, 2013 |
not rated yet |
1
Precisely engineering 3-D brain tissues
Borrowing from microfabrication techniques used in the semiconductor industry, MIT and Harvard Medical School (HMS) engineers have developed a simple and inexpensive way to create three-dimensional brain ...
Neuroscience
Nov 29, 2012 |
5 / 5 (2) |
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Scientists image brain structures that deteriorate in Parkinson's
A new imaging technique developed at MIT offers the first glimpse of the degeneration of two brain structures affected by Parkinson's disease.
Neuroscience
Nov 26, 2012 |
5 / 5 (1) |
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