Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences faculty members Ev Fedorenko, Ted Gibson, and Roger Levy believe they can answer a fundamental question: What is the purpose of language?

MIT researchers deciphered initially mystifying mouse behavior, yielding new ideas about how mice think and a mathematical tool to aid future research. The task the mice were supposed to master is simple: Turn a wheel left or right to get a reward and then recognize when the reward direction switches. When neurotypical people play such “reversal learning” games they quickly infer the optimal approach: stick with the direction that works until it doesn’t and then switch right away. Notably, people with schizophrenia struggle with the task. In the new open-access study in PLOS Computational Biology, mice surprised scientists by showing that while they were capable of learning the “win-stay, lose-shift” strategy, they nonetheless refused to fully adopt it.

In 2020, Kathrin Kajderowicz's father passed away from lung cancer. Her frustration with the treatments he received set her on a journey culminating in her pursuit of fundamental scientific questions at BCS. "My experience led me to a significant medical problem: How can we eventually shift the medical paradigm to develop treatments that consider not only one specific pathway or problem but contextualize systemic tissue or organ dysfunction?" To engage with this problem, Kajderowicz studies animals uniquely adapted to handle different stressors and environments, possibly modeling human disease states. "Perhaps we can turn to nature and see how different organisms have adapted to overcome and mitigate similar challenges."