Neuroscience

Programmes

Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour

We partnered with Wellcome to establish this new research centre, where scientists are using state-of-the-art techniques and theoretical models to investigate how circuits in the brain process information to create neural representations and guide behaviour.

Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour
Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour

Impressive progress has been made over the last 20 years in understanding the organisation and function of the brain, yet there is much we still do not know. By developing a world-class research centre which can host a diverse group of scientists with a common interest in the workings of the brain we hope to achieve significant progress towards a new goal of understanding exactly how the brain's neural circuits carry out the information processing that directly underlies behaviour.

The Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour at University College London (UCL) was formally opened in 2016, with Professor Thomas Mrsic-Flogel appointed as the Director in the same year. 

Following an ambitious programme of recruitment, SWC scientists are using cutting-edge molecular, cellular, imaging, electrophysiology and behavioural techniques, supported by theoretical modelling, to investigate how circuits in the brain process information to create neural representations and guide behaviour.

The Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit occupies a central location that connects with the SWC experimental laboratory space and nearby break-out spaces to facilitate discussions and collaborations bewteen theorists and experimentalists.

The Centre is located on the UCL main campus and complements the current strength of UCL's neuroscience research community and its relationships with other medical research organisations in the local area.

Research groups

Thomas Mrsic-Flogel

Director; Professor of Neuroscience

The organisation of circuits for cortical information processing

Athena Akrami

Group Leader

The neural mechanims for learning, inference and memory

Tim Behrens

Part-time Group Leader (based at SWC and at Oxford)

The neural mechanisms that support flexible goal-directed behaviour, inorder to link human and animal neuroscience, biological and artificial intelligence, and new methods for integrating across scales of neural activity.

Tiago Branco

Group Leader

Computation of instinctive decisions

Claudia Clopath

Part-time Group Leader (based at SWC and at Imperial)

Using computational and mathematical tools to address the questions of learning and memory in the brain

Chunyu Ann Duan

Group Leader

How flexible decisions are made under risk and social influence, and the neural circuit mechanisms underlying these choices

Jeffrey Erlich

Group Leader

The neurobiology of economic preferences, social cognition, and spatial navigation

Julia Harris

Group Leader

The role that sleep plays in neural circuit organisation to manage computational and energetic requirements that are crucial for survival

Sonja Hofer

Professor of Neuroscience

Neural circuits for sensory processing and sensory-guided behaviours 

Troy Margrie

Associate Director; Professor of Systems Neuroscience

The cellular logic of sensory circuits

John O'Keefe

Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience

Spatial and ethological memory 

Andrew Saxe

Joint Group Leader at SWC and the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit

A mathematical toolkit suitable for analysing and describing learning in the brain and mind

Marcus Stephenson-Jones

Group Leader

Principal components of goal-directed behaviour