Graphic of brain and video game characters.
Game-playing software holds lessons for neuroscience
February 25, 2015 - 2:30 pm
DeepMind computer provides new way to investigate how the brain works. By Elizabeth Gibney   CBMM Partner - DeepMind's research is the focus of a recent Nature article. The online article includes a video featuring interviews with Demis Hassabis and some of the DeepMind developers. Both, the article and video, discuss the recently published Nature paper by DeepMind, titled "Human-level control through deep reinforcement learning," which...
CBMM Weekly Research Meeting: Thinking in patterns: representations in the neural basis of theory of mind
February 24, 2015 - 4:00 pm
Harvard University: Northwest Bldg, Room 243
Jorie Koster-Hale, CBMM Thrust 4 (MIT, Saxe Lab), Moral Psychology Lab (Harvard U.)
Topic: Thinking in patterns: representations in the neural basis of theory of mind
Abstract: Social life depends on understanding other people’s behavior: why they do the things they do, and what they are likely to do next. These actions are just observable consequences of an unobservable, internal...
MITaly Networking Reception
MITaly Networking Reception
February 11, 2015 - 6:30 pm
Room 34-101
John Assad, Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard and Deputy Director of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (...
10 new tenure-track positions at IIT
John Assad, Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard and Deputy Director of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), will discuss IIT’s new plan to recruit more than 100 tenure track scientists over the next decade, including a current call for 10 new tenure-track...
Tools for Brain-Wide Mapping of the Computations of Intelligence
*Talk was rescheduled to March 10th* CBMM Weekly Research Meeting: Tools for Brain-Wide Mapping of the Computations of Intelligence
February 10, 2015 - 4:00 pm
Harvard University: Northwest Bldg, Room 243
Ed Boyden, CBMM Thrust 2: Circuits for Intelligence
*Talk was rescheduled to March 10th*
Topic: Progress on the CBMM challenge questions: What is there? What’s happening now? And why?
Abstract:
Ideally we would have maps of the molecular and anatomical circuitry of the brain, as well as of the dynamic activity of the brain, with sufficient detail to...
CBMM Postdoc Meeting
February 10, 2015 - 3:00 pm
Harvard University
CBMM Management Meeting
February 6, 2015 - 3:00 pm
MIT: McGovern Institute Reading Room, 46-5165
This event is by invitation only.
Future of Life Institute
Request for proposals: Making AI robust and beneficial
February 5, 2015 - 4:30 pm
Initial proposals (300–1000 words) due March 1, 2015 The Future of Life Institute, based in Cambridge, MA and headed by Max Tegmark (MIT), is seeking proposals for research projects aimed to maximize the future societal benefit of artificial intelligence while avoiding potential hazards. Projects may fall in the fields of computer science, AI, machine learning, public policy, law, ethics, economics, or education and outreach. This 2015 grants...
“Dahlia” by Katinka Matson | www.katinkamatson.com
Prof. Poggio’s response to Edge Question 2015: WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT MACHINES THAT THINK?
January 21, 2015 - 5:45 pm
The Edge Foundation poses an annual questions to researchers and intellectuals. The Edge Question 2015 is “WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT MACHINES THAT THINK?” CBMM Director Tomaso Poggio is one of the 191 contributors to have his response posted to Edge.org: “Turing++” Questions Recent months have seen an increasingly public debate taking form around the risks of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and in particular AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). A...
An image of neurons in a mouse hippocampus taken with expansion microscopy. Credit Ed Boyden, Fei Chen, Paul Tillberg/MIT
Expansion Microscopy Stretches Limits of Conventional Microscopes
January 19, 2015 - 5:45 pm
Today’s New York Times article covers Prof. Ed Boyden’s new Expansion Microscopy research: Expansion Microscopy Stretches Limits of Conventional Microscopes by John Markoff New York Times “A new laboratory technique enables researchers to see minuscule biological features, such as individual neurons and synapses, at a nearly molecular scale through conventional optical microscopes.” Click here to read the full article >
Boyden, E., Chen, F. & Tillberg, P. / MIT / Courtesy of National Institutes of Health A slice of a mouse brain (left) was expanded by nearly five-fold in each dimension by adding a water-soaking salt. The result — shown at smaller magnification (right) for comparison — has its anatomical structures are essentially unchanged.
Blown-up brains reveal nanoscale details: Material used in diaper absorbant can make brain tissue bigger and enable ordinary microscopes to resolve features down to 60 nanometres.
January 15, 2015 - 5:45 pm
by Ewen Callaway Nature, Vol. 517, 254, online January 09, 2015 January 15, 2015 doi:10.1038/nature.2015.16667   A recent article in Nature covers the Boyden Lab ExM research as presented by Prof. Ed  Boyden at SfN 2014: “Microscopes make living cells and tissues appear bigger. But what if we could actually make the things bigger? It might sound like the fantasy of a scientist who has read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland too many times, but the...
Expansion microscopy enables researchers to resolve details down to about 70 nanometers, while 300 nanometers was the previous limit with a conventional microscope. Images of a mouse brain segment enlarged (right) have greater resolution than those acquired using conventional microscopy without water expansion (left). Credit: Ed Boyden, Fei Chen, Paul Tillberg
Bigger is better for brain tissue understanding. Chemicals commonly used in diapers enable brain samples to be physically enlarged with water, allowing researchers to see nanoscale details
January 15, 2015 - 5:30 pm
NSF Press Release 15-002 While most efforts to understand the brain focus on new technologies to magnify small anatomical features, engineers at the MIT-based Center for Brains, Minds and Machines have found a way to make brains physically bigger. The technique, which the researchers call expansion microscopy, uses an expandable polymer and water to swell brain tissue to about four and a half times its usual size, so that nanoscale structures...
Using a new technique that allows them to enlarge brain tissue, MIT scientists created these images of neurons in the hippocampus. Image: Fei Chen and Paul Tillberg
MIT team enlarges brain samples, making them easier to image. New technique enables nanoscale-resolution microscopy of large biological specimens.
January 15, 2015 - 5:30 pm
MIT News has published an article covering the new expansion microscopy technique developed by Prof. Ed Boyden’s lab. MIT team enlarges brain samples, making them easier to image New technique enables nanoscale-resolution microscopy of large biological specimens. Anne Trafton | MIT News Office   “Beginning with the invention of the first microscope in the late 1500s, scientists have been trying to peer into preserved cells and tissues with...
A week at MIT; Workshop on quantitative methods in biology draws diverse undergrads from across the country.
A week at MIT; Workshop on quantitative methods in biology draws diverse undergrads from across the country [MIT News]
January 13, 2015 - 5:30 pm
Jessica Fujimori | MIT News correspondent MIT News published an article on the annual Quantitative Methods Workshop led by Mandana Sassanfar. Pictured above is Prof. Ellen C. Hildreth with students attending the workshop. “The workshop, sponsored by the Department of Biology and the National Science Foundation-funded Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines, focused on how computer programming can apply to problems in biology and neuroscience.”...
Tejas Dattatraya Kulkarni
Announcing the CBMM Siemens Graduate Fellowship
January 12, 2015 - 12:45 pm
In September 2014, the Siemens Corporation generously established the CBMM Siemens Graduate Fellowship. This fellowship will provide support, for one academic year, to an MIT graduate student whose research is focused on understanding human intelligence, and which bridges two of the main CBMM disciplines (computer science, cognitive science, and neuroscience.) Proposed research should contribute to CBMM goals of developing a computationally...
Workshop on Learning Theory, Dec. 18-20, 2014, Montevideo, Uruguay
Workshop on Learning Theory, Dec. 18-20, 2014, Montevideo, Uruguay
December 18, 2014 - 9:00 am
December, 18-20, 2014
Montevideo, Uruguay
The workshop is part of the triennial Conference on Foundations of Computational Mathematics (FoCM’14) organized by the Society for Foundations of Computational Mathematics hosted by the Universidad de la Republica in Montevideo, Uruguay.
The goal of the...

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