From the school to the workplace, whether someone achieves their goals is determined by the mental effort they invest in their tasks. A study by Brown University scientists examined what motivates people to work harder on specific tasks and in certain situations.

Halfway through John Stein’s lecture on the anatomy of the human brain hundreds of students in Brown’s largest lecture hall, the Salomon Center, began bobbing their heads up and down. Stein was in the middle of explaining the symptoms of bacterial meningitis, a deadly dangerous infection of brain tissue. It turns out that a simple bobbing of the head can test for an inflamed dura mater, a key symptom of brain infection.

Through an innovation awards program, the Robert J. and Nancy D. Carney Institute for Brain Science will provide $898,000 in seed funding for new high-impact research in computation, Alzheimer’s disease and other areas of brain science.

A collaborative team of researchers, working across fields of study, has found a new way to control the conversation between any two cells by using a novel technology that replaces normal chemical brain communication with optical pulses.

In a new study, a team of Brown University researchers affiliated with the Carney Institute for Brain Science is the first to examine the impact of Mechanical Affective Touch Therapy (MATT), a non-invasive form of peripheral nerve stimulation which can be used to treat anxiety disorders.

Amidst the many challenges of 2021, researchers in Brown University's Carney Institute for Brain Science contributed a whirlwind of scientific advances and news about the brain.

Seven postdoctoral researchers from universities throughout the United States have been selected to speak at the 2022 Carney Institute for Brain Science’s BrainExPo seminar series.

Lori Daiello spent the first decade of her career working as a clinical consultant pharmacist in assisted living facilities and nursing homes. She says observing the devastating effects of late-stage Alzheimer’s disease on patients and the prolonged suffering of their families and caregivers was the most impactful experience of her professional life.

Humans are uniquely capable of predicting the behavior of other humans in a vast array of social situations. Yet, very little has been understood about the cognitive mechanisms that enable people to perform this activity on a daily basis. 

The Society for NeuroEconomics has named Amitai Shenhav, a Brown University neuroscientist, one of two recipients worldwide of its 2021 early-career award.

Eve Glenn is on a mission to better understand addiction and to help create more effective treatments for alcohol and substance use disorders.

Three scientists affiliated with Brown University’s Carney Institute for Brain Science have received awards from the National Institutes of Health to support the completion of their doctoral dissertations and to facilitate the transition from graduate school to postdoctoral research positions.

Seven Brown University students have received graduate awards for the 2021/2022 academic year from the Robert J. and Nancy D. Carney Institute for Brain Science.

When completing a routine task like cooking or making a cup of coffee, each motion happens more or less automatically and rarely does one think about how each step impacts the next. A new study by researchers affiliated with the Carney Institute for Brain Science describes how these behavioral processes work.

Humans are social animals. We strongly depend on forming relationships, often based on similar interests. But the vast size of our social network limits our ability to know everything about everyone all at once. How then do people learn about relationships without having direct knowledge of each person in a social network?