MIT News Newsletter

	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
June 29, 2018
MIT News: top stories
A weekly digest of the Institute’s research and innovation

MIT scientists discover fundamental rule of brain plasticity

Study reveals how, when a synapse strengthens, its neighbors weaken.

How music lessons can improve language skills

Study links piano education with better word discrimination by kindergartners.

Nearly 80 exoplanet candidates identified in record time

Search considered successful “dress rehearsal” for exoplanet hunter TESS.

Researchers decode molecule that gives living tissues their flexibility

Study reveals atomic structure of tropoelastin, showing what goes wrong in some diseases.

Personalized “deep learning” equips robots for autism therapy

Machine learning network offers personalized estimates of children’s behavior.

In the Media

Prof. Amy Finkelstein speaks with WBUR’s Carey Goldberg about her study showing only a small amount of Medicare spending goes end-of-life care. Finkelstein explains, “there is very little Medicare spending on people with high probability of dying. And part of that is just that it's very, very hard to predict who is going to die.”

Prof. Robert Desimone speaks with Christopher Intagliata of Scientific American about his new research that shows how piano lessons can help improve a child’s language skills. Desimone and his colleagues found that, “piano lessons can heighten the brain's response to changes in pitch. And kids who got piano lessons were also better at telling apart two similar-sounding Mandarin words.”

Michael Shermer reviews Prof. Alan Lightman’s new book on science and spirituality, “Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine,” for The New York Times. Shermer calls the book an “elegant and moving paean to our spiritual quest for meaning in an age of science,” adding that it, “reminds us of the centrality of subjectivity in all human endeavors.”