New tools to answer timeless questions
Alan Jasanoff Photo: Allegra Boverman After finishing his PhD in molecular biophysics, Alan Jasanoff decided to veer away from that field and try looking into some of the biggest questions in neuroscience: How do we perceive things? What happens in our brains when we make decisions? After a few months, however, he realized that he didn’t have the tools he wanted to use — so he decided to start making his own. Jasanoff, who recently earned tenure in MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering, now specializes in developing novel brain-imaging agents that can reveal information more detailed than other human brain-imaging techniques such as fMRI and PET, and more comprehensive than traditional neuroscience measurements such as microscopy and electrode recordings. With the new tools, he is also beginning to explore some of the fundamental questions that first drew him into neuroscience.Neuroscientists commonly use fMRI, which measures blood flow in the brain, as...