Page 14 - Establishing the Institute for Brain and Neural Sciences

The World Health Organization estimates that 7.4 percent of global years lost to illness, disability, or premature death are caused by mental illnesses, including depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder, among other debilitating conditions. Mental illnesses rank as the third most costly medical conditions in terms of overall health care expenditures, behind only cardiac conditions and traumatic injury.
3 CENTER FOR RESEARCH ON MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL HEALTH
What prompts mental illness, what promotes resilience, and how can we counter processes that derail mental and emotional health?
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W eizmann Institute neuroscientists have a long
history of exploring how neural networks in the brain process emotions, form emotional memories, and modulate and regulate emotional expression, to gain insights into how these uniquely human processes occur or malfunction.
Some scientists employ integrated molecular, biochemical, genetic, and behavioral methods in state-of-the- art preclinical models to investigate neural pathways. Others use psychophysics techniques and brain imaging technology in humans and
electrophysiology in animal models to unveil emotion-related networks at the level of individual brain cells and understand how these networks malfunction in mental illness.
This center will galvanize mental and emotional health research to shed light on the basic mechanisms and properties of emotional regulation. The integrated exchange of complementary expertise facilitated by this center will provide insights that will help encourage mental resilience, prevent mental illness, and inform the design of new targets for brain-based treatments and therapies.