The Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience will bring together leaders in cognitive neuroscience and promising graduate students, post-doctoral researchers and early stage professors/scientists for an intensive two-week lecture and laboratory course aimed at topics on the cutting-edge of the discipline. This proposal seeks five years of funding for the program's continuation. This application adds a unique collaboration with the Kavli Foundation, which will enable interdisciplinary training in the mathematical, physical and engineering sciences to be added to the curriculum in cognitive neuroscience in order to help develop a new community of brain scholars with truly interdisciplinary training and skills. The Summer Institute focuses on leading the field in training in the latest advances, and exposes its participants to rapidly emerging methods and discoveries, including the acquisition of competencies in tools and techniques, and an understanding of translational science. Through a combination of lectures, debates, close interaction among Summer Institute attendees, and laboratories involving advanced techniques such as functional neuroimaging, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and electrophysiology, and an array of analytic methods and computational methods, participants are provided with a broad but rich exposure to modern techniques and approaches bisecting all fields bearing on the mind and brain. The intensely interdisciplinary nature of the Summer Institute is its most defining feature and valuable asset. The next 5 years of the Institute will continue its successful traditions while also providing innovations to significantly augment and enhance the program. These include the incorporation of both faculty and trainees from the mathematical, physical and engineering sciences into the training program, and the introduction of training to achieve competencies in tools and methods. The Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience provides an essential service to the field by providing the nation's early career researchers and clinical scientists with unique training that fosters interdisciplinary perspectives and collaboration, and by encouraging cross-disciplinary exchange between established scientific leaders and early stage investigators. The Summer Institute contributes directly to the advancement of the field by calling attention to and advancin knowledge of issues at the frontiers of current discovery that are relevant to the mission of the NIMH in basic and translational research and training.
The Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience will train early career researchers in the neuroscience of cognition. Understanding the basic mechanisms of behavior and higher mental function is critical for understanding neurological and psychiatric disorders, and for developing sensitive diagnostic tools and treatments. A distinguished faculty will train the promising students attending the Summer Institute, which will foster the development of the next generation of biomedical researchers serving society.
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| Gazzaniga, Michael S (2010) Neuroscience and the correct level of explanation for understanding mind. An extraterrestrial roams through some neuroscience laboratories and concludes earthlings are not grasping how best to understand the mind-brain interface. Trends Cogn Sci 14:291-2 |
