We have invested in a number of innovative collaborative research programmes around the world in the broad area of neural circuits and behaviour. These reflect the types of research we envision being carried out at the forthcoming Sainsbury-Wellcome Centre.
In 2007 Gatsby Trustees decided to expand our efforts in neuroscience. At the heart of this endeavour is the Sainsbury-Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour at University College London – a state-of-the-art research institute we are developing in partnership with the Wellcome Trust which will open in 2014. Since 2007 we have also invested in a number of complementary research programmes around the world in the broad area of neural circuits and behaviour.
These programmes reflect the types of innovative, collaborative research we envision being carried out at the Centre, and the people we support bring a wealth of expertise to help our thinking on the Centre’s planning and the development of its scientific focus.
Areas of focus within programmes we support are:
- Circuit assembly and organisation (how neurons are connected to form circuits);
- Information processing: from synapse to neuron to circuit (how information is transmitted and transformed from neuron to neuron; and within neural circuits, how signals are compartmentalised, integrated, timed and faithfully transmitted throughout the brain);
- Circuits and behavioural systems (sensory processing, motor systems, fear, reward, emotional states, memory, attention, decision making);
- Computational and theoretical neuroscience.
Projects
We support this consortium, which is using hardware, software and biological tools separately developed in laboratories at three US institutes to collectively enable the construction of “connectomes” – wiring diagrams of whole regions of the nervous system.
We have supported Professor Michael Häusser’s research for many years and provided a five-year grant at the beginning of 2007 to expand the research and technology in his laboratory, in particular in the area of high resolution investigation of circuits.
Since 2005 we have supported experimental and theoretical neuroscience at Columbia University through new faculty recruitment, grants for innovative research projects, and the forging of links with other institutes for international collaboration.
We support this consortium of five laboratories at three institutes across California collaborating to develop and refine tools for the functional analysis of cortical circuits underlying higher brain function, such as visual perception and attention.