
"The
Brain Research Institute is a catalyst for collaborations
among scientists, engineers and clinicians who study brain
function and health."
The
discipline of neuroscience has grown exponentially in
the last 30 years by attracting scientists from a wide
variety of basic science and clinical disciplines, from
cognitive psychology and psychiatry to molecular biology
and engineering. Understanding the brain is the greatest
frontier in modern life science and medicine. The scientific
study of the brain borders the humanities because the
brain makes us what we are. The complexity of the brain
beckons those interested in tough, important problems.
UCLA has invested heavily in the field of neuroscience,
establishing the Brain Research Institute in the early
1960s. No fewer than 26 different departments at UCLA
have found neuroscience to be so important to their mission
that they have hired neuroscientists as faculty. UCLA
can now boast neuroscience research and educational programs
that are among the top 10 in the world in terms of breadth
and quality.
The
large size of the UCLA neuroscience community and the diversity
of approaches mean that it is impossible for individual
departments to take responsibility for stewardship of the
discipline of neuroscience at UCLA. The BRI, as the central
administrative and intellectual unit, is needed to provide
a functional and symbolic center for neuroscience activities
on campus. The role is functional in the sense that the
BRI fosters interdepartmental cooperation in research and
education, and provides services to the neuroscience community
as a whole. The role is symbolic because without a central
unit the discipline would be seen as fragmented. The symbolism
of a unitary neuroscience organization is important in attracting
faculty, students and funding to UCLA.
Non-departmental units such as ORUs can represent agents
for faster change, creating or disbanding interdepartmental
research and educational affinity groups as the need arises.
The large size of a discipline like neuroscience creates
the need for a unifying influence. The BRI is a coherent
and cohesive force that takes advantage of opportunities
for cooperation among and between departments.
It
is very apparent that the BRI plays a critical role on campus.
It is the only organized unit that effectively unites the
highly diverse UCLA neuroscience community by initiating
and fostering interdepartmental cooperation in research
and education. The BRI has reached new levels of success.
In many ways, the recent "Sunset Review" was a
sunrise review. The BRI is essential to the continued and
increasing excellence of UCLA neuroscience, now and in the
future.

The
BRI’s mission is
·
to increase understanding of how the brain works, how
it develops, and how it responds to experience, injury
and disease, and
·
to help make UCLA the preeminent center for translating
basic knowledge into medical interventions and new technologies.
To execute
this mission, the BRI functions explicitly as the interdisciplinary
and non-departmental voice of the basic neuroscience community.
The BRI’s strategic goals for the next five years
are:
·
to invigorate research programs and to nurture novel collaborations
that bring together investigators from complementary fields;
·
to stimulate the translation of basic knowledge into therapies
and cures for diseases and injuries of the nervous system;
·
to recruit outstanding faculty, postdoctoral fellows and
graduate students;
·
to strengthen existing educational programs by fostering
the integration of insights from basic neuroscience, cell
and molecular biology, cognitive science, engineering
and clinical neuroscience; and
·
to extend scientific knowledge into the commercial sector
and into elementary and secondary schools.
The
BRI’s goal is for UCLA to become the preeminent center
of excellence for neuroscience research and education and
for the “translation” of research into clinical
and technological applications. In the next five years,
its efforts will focus on four areas of neuroscience: (1)
learning, memory, and plasticity; (2) neural repair; (3)
neuroengineering; and (4) neurogenetics. UCLA’s strength
in these areas comes from multidisciplinary efforts to understand
the nervous system at multiple levels with diverse technologies.
These efforts depend on the close cooperation of all neuroscience
units on campus.

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