In an article for Wired, Sarah Zhang writes that MIT researchers have identified a new gene-editing system that could prove more effective than current techniques. The new system involves, “a different protein that also edits human DNA, and, in some cases, it may work even better than Cas9,” the protein used for DNA editing.
Karen Weintraub writes for The Boston Globe about Prof. Ki Ann Goosens’ work examining the intersection of stress and mental illness. Weintraub explains that Goosens’ latest work looks at whether the medications used to treat PTSD make biological sense.
In this video, PBS explores a new technique MIT researchers developed to enlarge brain samples, making them easier to image at high resolutions. Prof. Ed Boyden explains that he hopes the technique could be used to “hunt down very rare things in a tissue.”
In an article for Bloomberg Business about how poverty can impact brain development in children, John Tozzi highlights research by Prof. John Gabrieli examining how family income can affect academic achievement. "It’s only in the last few years that there’s been any systematic research asking about the biological side of the story," explains Gabrieli.
Prof. Ki Goosens is investigating how the gherlin hormone could possibly be used to develop a vaccine for PTSD, reports Bree Sison for CBS Boston. “If we can pick even just one mental illness and improve the outcome for people who suffer from it, I’d be happy,” says Goosens.
Alison Gopnik of The Wall Street Journal writes that new research by Professor John Gabrieli indicates that poverty can have a negative impact on brain development in children. The researchers found that “low-income children had developed thinner cortices than the high-income children.”
Ami Albernaz reports for The Boston Globe on a new study co-authored by Prof. John Gabrieli that finds that income disparity affects brain development in children. “The findings add a biological perspective on what it means to come from a lower socioeconomic background,” says Gabrieli.
Nidhi Subbaraman of BetaBoston writes that Prof. Feng Zhang has been awarded $1 million from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation to study brain cells. The grant will fund a project that will use the gene-editing technique CRISPR to “find ways to streamline or speed up [neuron cell] growth by turning genes on and off.”
Research by Prof. John Gabrieli demonstrates that poverty can have a negative impact on the adolescent brain, writes Brooks Hays for UPI. “When researchers at MIT scanned the brains of some 54 students, they found high-income students (in comparison with lower-income peers) have thicker cortex tissue in areas of the brain linked with visual perception and knowledge acquisition,” Hays writes.
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.”