Scientist looking down a microscope symbolizing innovation

Innovation

Nurturing translation and tech transfer

Two scientists looking at an image of a brain on a screen

Our mission

Discovering how the brain gives rise to behaviour

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TRANSFORMATIVE TRAINING

Creating future leaders in neuroscience

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RESEARCH CULTURE

Interdisciplinary collaboration on the brain

Scientists solve the brain’s motion-source separation problem

Neuroscientists have discovered how the brain distinguishes between visual motion occurring in the external world from that caused by the observer moving through it. Known as the “motion-source separation problem,” researchers have long wondered how the brain achieves this critical sensory distinction. This is the first time scientists have pinpointed the precise mechanisms.

19 February 2025

Neuroscience FoMO: Foraging across Many Options

SWC Emerging Neuroscientists Seminar Series speaker Dr Laura Grima discusses her work with the FoMO setup, and the computational model – AQUA – she is using to describe decision-making. She talks about her findings and the difficulties of science when trying to capture the complexity of life.

21 February 2025

Illustration of a mouse on the left with trees on the right some with acorns dotted around near them

Professor Andrew Saxe announced as a 2025 Blavatnik Awards in the UK Finalist

Professor Andrew Saxe, a Joint SWC/GCNU Group Leader at UCL, has been announced as a 2025 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the United Kingdom Finalist in Life Sciences. This is the second time Professor Saxe has been named a Finalist after he was first recognised in the 2023 Blavatnik Awards.

19 February 2025

What can mice teach us about football?

Football is adored by fans all around the world. But what makes “the beautiful game” so captivating? Is it the interactive nature, the uncertainty of the outcome, or the complexity of the strategy? All of these elements enticed researchers at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre to study embodied multi-agent decision-making in a dynamically changing world.

17 February 2025

Octagon setup at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre

Why join SWC?

Career development is personal, and it can look different for different people. As SWC expands there are lots of opportunities to become involved and carve out a meaningful career path with us. We’re proud to be a place where talent is recognised and developed.

Ground Floor Lecture Theatre

Emerging Neuroscientists Seminar Series: Sequential predictive learning is a unifying theory for hippocampal representation and replay

Daniel Levenstein

Ground Floor Lecture Theatre

SWC Hybrid Seminar: The Geometry of Decision Making

Professor Iain D. Couzin

Director, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour, Konstanz

Sainsbury Wellcome Centre

Teacher Encounters 2025

The Central London Careers Hub in Partnership with SWC