About

Your brain mediates everything that you sense, feel, think, and do. The brain is incredibly complex – each cubic millimeter of your brain contains perhaps a hundred thousand cells, connected by a billion synapses, each operating with millisecond precision. Furthermore, each cell is made of thousands of kinds of biomolecule, organized into complex signaling machines with nanoscale spatial precision. We develop scalable, ground truth-oriented tools that enable the mapping of the molecules and wiring of the brain, the recording and control of its signaling dynamics, and the understanding and repair of its computational function and dysfunction. We distribute our tools as freely as possible to the scientific community, and also apply them, often in interdisciplinary collaborations, to the systematic analysis of brain computations, aiming to reveal the fundamental mechanisms of brain functionality, and yielding new, powerful therapeutic strategies for neurological and psychiatric disorders. Scientifically, our ultimate goal is to understand how all the building blocks of the brain work together as an emergent whole, to generate complex outputs like decisions and emotions, with a key direction the creation of biologically accurate computer simulations of entire brains, starting with small brains and ultimately heading towards the human brain.

Contact Info and Affiliations

Ed Boyden, Ph.D.
Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology at MIT
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
McGovern Institute
Professor, Departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Media Arts and Sciences, and Biological Engineering
Co-Director, MIT Center for Neurobiological Engineering, K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics
Member, MIT Center for Environmental Health Sciences, Computational and Systems Biology Initiative, and Koch Institute
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Ave., Room 46-2171C, Cambridge, MA 02139
email – edboyden@mit.edu
phone – (617) 324-3085
administrative email alias: synthneuromit-admins@googlegroups.com

Virtual Tour

Directions to the lab

Here is a map to our group’s headquarters, in the MIT McGovern Institute. It is on Main Street, west of the Kendall T-stop on the MBTA red line. Enter the Brain and Cognitive Sciences building from the McGovern Institute entrance on Main Street, then take the elevator or stairs to the 2nd floor, and follow the signs to 46-2171C.

Here are directions to the MIT campus by private or public transportation, as well as the locations of parking locations on campus. Metered parking is available in front of the building.

Supporting our work

Our group has a long history of consistently launching new research directions, often quite different from our past track record, that result in pioneering and useful inventions and discoveries. However, securing funding for such projects has often been extremely difficult – most traditional funders like to fund projects that are based on a long history of past work. Accordingly, we are often searching for resources to support the creation, and application, of cutting-edge technologies for analyzing, repairing, and simulating the brain. If you would like to contribute financially, you can donate to our group at MIT, in a tax-deductible way (MIT being a non-profit), by clicking on this link. We are grateful for your consideration and vision!