MIT has begun experimenting with a hands-on neuroengineering curriculum at MIT, in which undergraduate and graduate students actively engage in the process of becoming neuroengineers, learning to solve intractable problems of the brain by actually doing it, says MIT Department of Biological Engineering professor Ed Boyden.

Neurological and psychiatric disorders such as traumatic brain injury, stroke, Parkinson’s disease, autism, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and chronic pain affect well over a billion people worldwide, with more than $1 trillion spent yearly in the battle against these disorders.