Aging Brain Initiative

Thanks to renewed challenge gifts from Glenda Mattes and Steve Corbin, in memory of the late MIT alum Donald Mattes ’67, SM ’69, the family of Priscilla King Gray and former MIT President Dr. Paul E. Gray ’54, SM ’55, ScD ’60, (Virginia and Tom Army, Amy and Dave Sluyter, Andrew and Yuki Gray, Weezie and Tim Huyck, and all their children) and another philanthropic family, if 300 donors give to the Aging Brain Initiative (ABI) on March 12, these generous donors will make a combined gift of $30,000 ($15,000 + $5000 + $10,000).A “miBrain” developed by the labs of Picower Professor Li-Huei Tsai and Institute Professor Robert Langer integrates all six major human brain cell types. The team used the cutting edge cell culture to study how an Alzheimer’s risk gene altered cellular interactions to cause disease pathology. 

Dementias of aging affect 46 million people and families worldwide, with the numbers poised to double every 20 years. There is still no cure. MIT’s response, the Aging Brain Initiative (ABI), galvanizes a powerful collaboration across MIT to pursue innovative research that produces new insights, potential therapies, and technologies. The ABI is distinguished both by its systems-wide approach to neurodegenerative disease and achieving practical results, such as our GENUS light and sound therapy that has shown encouraging improvements in early Alzheimer’s patients in Phase 2 trials. For more information and many more examples, see our 2024 ABI Newsletter. 

Three founding faculty members of the Aging Brain Initiative (left to right): Emery N. Brown, Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering and Computational Neuroscience; Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor of Neuroscience; and Edward Boyden, Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology.

A volunteer in clinical studies of 40 Hz sensory stimulation (GENUS) is examined in the MRI machine at MIT’s Athinoula A. Martinos Imaging Center.