Transforming Neuroscience

Discovering how the brain gives rise to behaviour

What are we researching?

How does the brain represent the world?

What are we researching?

How does the brain make decisions?

What are we researching?

How does the brain form memories?

Locomotion triggers changes in brain state and long distance communication

While scientists have spent years mapping anatomical projections and monitoring activity from individual neurons, little is known about how signals sent by individual neurons relate to the larger, bidirectional communication that underlies complex behaviour. Neuroscientists at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre report in Nature Neuroscience on a new approach that offers insight into these complex neural conversations.

Calcium activity waves play across dorsal cortex

How does the brain change during adolescence?

There are dramatic changes in neural circuits, particularly in frontal cortical and basal ganglia circuits during adolescence, but how do these changes sculpt learning and decision-making? Dr Linda Wilbrecht, Associate Professor, UC Berkeley, explains.

Students at computer illustration

Understanding the preparatory activity of volitional movement

Every day we make thousands of specific movements that we have never made before. Our brain must coordinate these volitional movements ‘on the fly’ and this requires preparatory activity. Dr Nuo Li explains how his lab is trying to understand the preparatory activity of volitional movement.

Neural representations of self-motion

Dr. Kathleen Cullen explains her laboratory’s research addressing the question of how the brain computes accurate estimates of our self-motion relative to the world.

Discovering how the brain gives rise to behaviour

How does the brain allow us to think, feel, see, smell, hear, laugh and love? By bringing together world-leading experimental and computational neuroscientists, the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre's mission is to explain how activity in brain circuits gives rise to thoughts, sensations, memories and actions.

Ground Floor Lecture Theatre

SWC Seminar: Understanding the brain’s model of the external world

Professor Loren Frank

University of California, San Francisco

Ground Floor Lecture Theatre

Neural circuits for goal-directed adaptive motor control

Mackenzie Mathis

Junior Fellow, The Rowland Institute at Harvard

Ground Floor Lecture Theatre

SWC Seminar: Neural Circuits for Odor Coding in Piriform Cortex

Dr Kevin Franks, PhD, P.I.

Duke Neurobiology, Duke University of Medicine