Institute for Brain and Neural Systems Home Pages
Institute for Brain and Neural Systems
The Institute for Brain and Neural Systems, directed by Physics Nobel Laureate, Leon Cooper, includes faculty members from the Departments of Neuroscience, Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Physics, and the Division of Applied Mathematics. Members of the Institute conduct research in brain function and neural systems that draws on biology, psychology, mathematics, engineering, physics, linguistics, and computer science. Their overall goal is a deeper understanding of the basic processes by which the central nervous system learns and organizes itself and acquires its capacity for mental acts. A central theme of the Institute is the interaction between theoretical ideas and experimental results. Work at the Institute has created an interaction between theory and experiment that is rare (perhaps unprecedented) in neurobiology an interaction in which theory and experiment converse with and illuminate each other an interaction in which theorists have joined experimentalists in the laboratory and have been willing to gamble years of their time to test consequences and assumptions. Current areas of research include biological mechanisms of learning and memory storage and the analysis and application of artificial neural networks.
Recently, an even broader set of opportunities for interdisciplinary
research in Brain Science have become available to physics
graduate students through the Brown University Brain Science
program. This program brings together experimentalists and
theoreticians to work together to accelerate our understanding
of the brain. Its inter-disciplinary studies blend mathematics,
neurobiology, computation, and cognitive and behavioral sciences.
Like the institute, the more than 70 members of the Brain
Science Program conduct research in brain function and neural
systems that draws on biology, psychology, mathematics, engineering,
physics, linguistics and computer science. The program emphasizes
the interaction of theory and experiment; this interaction
has greatly enriched both endeavors, enabling scientists to
pose new questions with precision and clarity.
Selected Recent PhD Dissertations
Brian Blais, "The Role of the Environment in Synaptic Plasticity: Towards an Understanding of Learning and Memory"
Omer Artun, "Implications of Dynamic Synapses on Synaptic Plasticity and Neural Coding"
Predrag Neskovic, "Feedforward, Feedback Neural Networks with Context Driven Segmentation and Recognition"
