Back to (brain) basics
In his own words, MIT neuroscientist Mark Bear admits he did not “wake up one day and say ‘Hey, I’m going to cure autism.’” But, after decades of painstaking basic research on how the brain rewires itself in response to external cues, Bear has discovered a way to reverse the symptoms of Fragile X Syndrome, a disorder that can cause autism, mental retardation and epilepsy.“It was a classic payoff of basic research,” says Bear, the Picower Professor of Neuroscience.And Bear is not the only MIT neuroscientist discovering this payoff. Several basic research projects have recently yielded drugs now in clinical trials to treat a variety of brain disorders. Helped by advances in lab technology, neuroscientists have learned enough about how the brain works that they can start coming up with ways to treat problems that arise when something goes wrong, says Mriganka Sur, head of MIT’s Department of Brain and...