Page 5 - ESTABLISHING THE INSTITUTE FOR BRAIN AND NEURAL SCIENCES

The Institute for Brain and Neural Sciences will address the most fundamental of questions: How do consciousness and cognition emerge from the brain’s complex neural networks? How do we learn and remember? Why does brain function decline with age? What are the circumstances underlying mental illness or neurodegeneration, and what can be done to repair brain and spinal cord injuries?
The Institute for Brain and Neural Sciences—a USD $200 million project—will take shape in two parts, both of which are critical to fostering harmony, integration, and synergy: the construction of a new building that will serve as a hub for neuroscience activities, facilities, and state-of-the-art technologies; and incentive mechanisms to facilitate and amplify collaborative work across disciplines. In this way, the Institute will advance neuroscience economies of scale.
This efort will further enable a rich network of international collaborations, serve as a vehicle to attract the best neuroscientists worldwide, and be a powerful, national platform for parterships with hospitals and other research institutions in Israel.
The Weizmann Institute of Science is seeking philanthropic partners to participate in establishing the Institute for Brain and Neural Sciences, with multiple naming opportunities for leadership gifts.
The highest-impact journals in the feld consistently publish Weizmann Institute studies, and Weizmann studies often comprise a disproportionately high ratio of publications in these journals. Here are some examples of recent studies:
Prof. Alon Chen’s lab identifed
four distinct temperaments among mice—comparable to personality characteristics in humans—and linked them to specifc genetic profles,
a major step towards enabling scientists to more deeply study mental health and illness in people.
Prof. Rony Paz and his team revealed how emotional learning and memory are represented in the brain by showing that temporal sequences across neurons in the amygdala serve as a coding mechanism.
The lab of Prof. Ofer Yizhar used cutting-edge optogenetics to
track the dynamics of how the brain encodes social sensory cues, with relevance to autism spectrum disorder.
The labs of Prof. Rafael Malach
and Prof. Michal Irani caught the interest of the cognitive and systems neuroscience communities with a brain imaging study that revealed the importance of facial geometry in how we perceive human faces.
Prof. Irit Sagi’s team is closing in on a promising target enzyme for correcting the genetic dysfunction underlying fragile X syndrome.
The lab of Prof. Noam Sobel used the Institute’s powerful 7-Tesla magnetic resonance imaging system to show that olfaction is possible even in the absence of an olfactory bulb.
Prof. Michal Schwartz and her team pioneered the theory of ‘protective autoimmunity,’ which attributes
a revolutionary role to the immune system in supporting cognitive function, mental stability, stem cell renewal and repair, and in combating neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
Prof. Shimon Ullman, an Israel Prize laureate, is working with his colleagues to narrow the gap between the visual recognition abilities of humans and the artifcial intelligence systems they build.
Prof. Nachum Ulanovsky and
Dr. Yaniv Ziv and their teams made key fndings on navigational ‘place cells’ in the brain that have important implications for understanding Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. The initial discovery of these cells garnered the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Prof. Elior Peles and his group uncovered how the cells that produce myelin—a protective, insulating material that coats nerve cells— recognize and interact with the neurons they sheath. Their fndings may lead to new therapeutic strategies to treat neurological diseases such as multiple sclerosis.
Prof. Mike Fainzilber and his group are leveraging their discovery of how electrical signals are transmitted from cell nucleus to neural extensions, with important implications for designing drugs to treat anxiety disorders and chronic pain.
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