Solving the mysteries of bioscience
Foundational Science Fuels Breakthroughs
Inspiring Next-Generation Scientists
Exploring the brain’s activity, at the level of individual neurons and the whole brain, to reveal how we interpret our environments to make decisions.
Goals and Approach
How do our brains understand the world around us to guide fundamental human behaviors? To answer these questions, scientists at the Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics are analyzing and tracing the path of neural signals in neural circuits cascading and interacting across the whole brain and body. Their approach is focused on how the brain works rather than what it is made of at a cellular or molecular level. Teams of researchers working collaboratively develop next-generation neuro-technologies that capture massive amounts of data that are shared with the wider scientific community. The goal is to catalyze scientific discovery that will lead to treatments and therapies for brain disorders.
We aim to discover how neurons’ activity – and changes in that activity – allow the brain to perform complex but fundamental computations and drive flexible behaviors.
Our experiments and open resources will shed light on behavior, memory, how we handle uncertainty and risk, how we and other animals chase rewards, and how some or all of these complicated cognitive functions go awry in neuropsychiatric disorders such as depression, ADHD, or addiction.
Meet our groups
08.03.2023
07.13.2023
06.12.2023
The electrophysiology group aims to monitor and manipulate spikes with high spatiotemporal specificity in order to open up new avenues for understanding the neural underpinnings of behavior.
Meet this group
The Instrumentation group serves the engineering needs of scientists at the Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics. They support the technology critical to experimental platforms and develop new tools to advance the field.
Aiming to generate comprehensive descriptions of neuronal types and examine connectivity at various scales in defined cell types.
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A platform for high-throughput and reproducible neurophysiology, openly available to run experiments for external scientists.
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Creating a best-in-class open, reproducible, and scalable platform for scientific data storage, analysis, and sharing.
Investigating how the nervous system learns and makes decisions in dynamic environments.
Learn more about our other Science Programs.
Working to understand the delicate balancing act of the human immune system—how it works when we’re healthy, and what goes wrong in disease.
The Allen Institute for Cell Science is focused on exploring and understanding human cells — the incredibly complex building blocks of our bodies. We use advanced technologies and work collaboratively to study the cell and its components as an integrated system.
