{"id":636681,"date":"2026-10-20T21:24:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T21:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/636681\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T21:24:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T21:24:13","slug":"symposium-highlights-mits-wide-range-of-innovations-for-aging-brain-health-mit-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/636681\/","title":{"rendered":"Symposium highlights MIT\u2019s wide range of innovations for aging brain health | MIT News"},"content":{"rendered":"

From its beginning in 2015, the premise of MIT\u2019s Aging Brain Initiative<\/a> (ABI) has been that neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer\u2019s are complex, \u201csystem-wide\u201d breakdowns that will require advances of many kinds from many sources to address. The six talks at the ABI\u2019s symposium \u201cInnovations for the Aging Brain\u201d on Sept. 25 illustrated what that\u2019s come to mean at MIT, as scientists and engineers described their latest work to improve health for the aging brain.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ABI is unique because it brings together researchers from a diverse array of fields,\u201d said ABI Director Li-Huei Tsai<\/a>, Picower Professor in the the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS). \u201cToday\u2019s symposium showcases MIT\u2019s collective brilliance across neuroscience, engineering, chemistry, and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the talks, for instance, featured a team effort including Giovanni Traverso<\/a>, the Karl Van Tassel (1925) Professor of Mechanical Engineering and a physician at Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital, who has joined forces with Tsai and other collaborators to develop an artificial intelligence system that could improve personalized Alzheimer\u2019s care by matching patients to the best prevention interventions for them. The system integrates data from clinical trials, patient lifestyle histories, and multi-omics data (e.g., genomics, proteomics) to predict an individual\u2019s Alzheimer\u2019s progression and likely response to interventions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Speaking alongside project leads Arvid Gollwitzer<\/a>, an engineer-scientist in the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and MIT-Novo Nordisk AI Fellow Adri\u00e1n Noriega de la Colina<\/a>, Traverso described how the team engineered an AI model, called FINGERS-7B<\/a>, to integrate these multiple highly diverse data sources into its training, thereby amassing 8 trillion \u201ctokens\u201d to inform its predictions.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery individual is very unique in their biology, and that links to how we respond to those interventions,\u201d said Noriega. Not only could AI predictions help tailor individual prevention measures, he added, but also it could inform clinical trial designs by better pinpointing the most appropriate populations to target with a prospective drug or other treatment.<\/p>\n

Picower Professor Earl K. Miller<\/a> focused on prevention of a different problem for the aging brain: cognitive side effects from exposure to too much general anesthesia. Noting high rates of postoperative delirium in older adults after major surgery, Miller described his research with ABI founding member and Institute Professor Emery N. Brown<\/a>, a Picower Institute and BCS colleague, to develop a closed-loop system that uses brain wave-based measurements of unconsciousness to optimize anesthesia dosing. Miller and Brown\u2019s labs have shown that regardless of their molecular means of action, multiple anesthesia drugs induce unconsciousness in the same way: by shifting brainwaves out of phase with each other, disrupting the coordination of communication across the brain\u2019s cortex that sustains cognition and consciousness. Informed by such brain wave \u201csignatures\u201d of unconsciousness, the system could help anesthesiologists to safely tailor dosing during surgery.<\/p>\n

In her talk, associate professor of mechanical engineering Ritu Raman<\/a>, the Eugene Bell Career Development Chair of Tissue Engineering, described how she\u2019s approaching the study of neuromuscular diseases, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and muscular dytrophies, by developing advanced lab models of muscle tissue that also integrate nerves and vasculature. For instance, for ALS, her lab has been able to make the cultures from induced pluripotent stem cells derived from patients. The lab models give her team an opportunity to examine neuromuscular junctions in detail and to model how they change in response to potentially therapeutic drugs.<\/p>\n

In many neurodegenerative diseases associated with aging, such as Alzheimer\u2019s and Parkinson\u2019s, a major pathology is misfolding and aggregation of intrinsically disordered proteins, such as amyloid-beta or alpha-synuclein. In her talk, William R (1964) and Daniel L. (1995) Young Career Development Assistant Professor of Chemistry Oleta Johnson<\/a> described her lab\u2019s work to prevent aggregation before it starts. In pursuit of that strategy, she said her lab\u2019s research is focused on developing the chemical knowledge and means to identify proteins at issue, detect that they are moving into a problematic state, and then control their conformation.<\/p>\n

Eugene McDermott Professor in the Brain Sciences and Human Behavior Alan Jasanoff<\/a>, a member of the BCS and Biological Engineering departments as well as the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, described a very different application of chemistry to aging brain research. He described how his lab develops novel chemical probes to make molecules in the brain visible in magnetic resonance imaging. These include the neuromodulatory enzyme cholinesterase, which is the target of many of the few drugs approved to treat Alzheimer\u2019s, and also lipids, which several brain cell types mishandle in Alzheimer\u2019s, Tsai and others have shown. His lab has also developed technology to genetically encode a novel probe in brain cells to improve MRI visualization of brain activity.<\/p>\n

And while many researchers focus on the prominent problems that proteins or lipids present in neurodegenerative disease, Novartis Professor of Chemistry Laura Kiessling<\/a> discussed a less-appreciated but still important component of cellular function: sugars called glycans that line the surface of cells. In particular, researchers have linked a glycan called heparan sulfate to Alzheimer\u2019s disease. Kiessling\u2019s lab, working with ABI founding member Ed Boyden<\/a>, Y. Eva Tan Professor of Neurotechnology, is working to characterize and understand glycans. Her lab, for instance, has shown that glycans of different sequences organize on cell membranes so that they can bind and recruit specific proteins to distinct regions on cells.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are really excited about the fact that we\u2019ve observed this now for the first time and have a toolkit to study other diseases,\u201d she said. Understanding glycan binding could even give scientists a means to target different cells and cellular processes.<\/p>\n

Following the six talks, more than a dozen trainees at a poster session presented even more aging brain-related projects from around the Institute, further highlighting MIT\u2019s diversity of research in the area, something the ABI exists to encourage.<\/p>\n

From massive AI datasets to the sugars on individual cells, the symposium highlighted how MIT scientists are pushing the frontiers of science and engineering to improve understanding of, and interventions for, the health of the aging brain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From its beginning in 2015, the premise of MIT\u2019s Aging Brain Initiative (ABI) has been that neurodegenerative diseases…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[173525,312064,312066,312067,57429,312065,205214,79990,212632,144124,134280,37653,134,527,312068,116976,53534,111,139,69,312069,309951,159739],"class_list":["post-636681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-aging-brain","tag-aging-brain-initiative-abi","tag-ai-in-brain-research","tag-alan-jasanoff","tag-als","tag-alzheimer039s-research","tag-anesthesia","tag-delirium","tag-dementia-research","tag-earl-k-miller","tag-giovanni-traverso","tag-glycans","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-laura-kiessling","tag-mit-bcs","tag-mit-picower-institute","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-oleta-johnson","tag-parkinsons-research","tag-ritu-raman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}