The Picower Center for Learning and Memory is an independent research entity within the School of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Its faculty members have academic appointments in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and/or the Department of Biology. Graduate students from both Departments can carry out thesis research at the Picower Center. Founded in 1994, the Picower Center’s mission is to explore learning and memory and associated cognitive functions – for example, perception, attention, and consciousness – at molecular and cellular levels as well as the brain systems level.

The Picower Center’s uniqueness and strengths include: an exciting, focused intellectual mission; a faculty with powerful and interdisciplinary approaches to understanding the central nervous system; an excellent group of postdoctoral fellows and graduate students; and success in pursuing financial support.

The Center currently has eleven faculty labs, and two additional new faculty hires are planned. The Picower Center is located in recently renovated space on the east campus of MIT in the Kendall Square section of Cambridge. A Picower building will be constructed by 2005 on the northeast sector of campus, within MIT's new brain research complex, and the Center's faculty and staff will be housed under one roof in their own state-of-the-art research building.