The Neuroscience Department has a very strong basic science research component, with a diverse portfolio of research programs and approaches. This is an ideal basis for the 21st-century challenge of understanding normal and diseased brain function. Additionally, several laboratories have strong links to clinical programs and host clinician-scientists. The Department offers a collaborative environment in which multidisciplinary and multiscale approaches provide fertile ground for identifying new mechanisms of neurological disorders. Our expertise ranges from molecular (atomic), genetic, cellular, and circuit levels to whole organism behavioral, and also clinical levels. To achieve this multiscale approach, members of the Department have backgrounds from many disciplines: biology (genetics, molecular and cellular), physics, statistics, computer science, and medicine.

The Neuroscience Department has a very strong basic science research component, with a diverse portfolio of research programs and approaches. This is an ideal basis for the 21st-century challenge of understanding normal and diseased brain function. Additionally, several laboratories have strong links to clinical programs and host clinician-scientists. The Department offers a collaborative environment in which multidisciplinary and multiscale approaches provide fertile ground for identifying new mechanisms of neurological disorders. Our expertise ranges from molecular (atomic), genetic, cellular, and circuit levels to whole organism behavioral, and also clinical levels. To achieve this multiscale approach, members of the Department have backgrounds from many disciplines: biology (genetics, molecular and cellular), physics, statistics, computer science, and medicine.

Our mission and aim

• To understand the molecular, cellular, and network mechanisms that shape dynamic connectivity within the brain and result in learning, memory, sensory perception, social communication, and cognition.

• To understand how genetic, epigenetic, and environmental factors individually and collectively shape dynamic brain connectivity and result in neurological and psychiatric disorders.

• To understand the interactions between the brain and other organs and systems within the body, like the microbiome and the immune system.

• To develop pharmacological and genetic tools for preventing/alleviating/curing peripheral and central neuronal circuit deficits.

• To leverage computational approaches for analyzing and modeling brain connectivity.