Congratulations to HWNI faculty members Fritz Sommer, Bruno Olshausen, and members of their labs!
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The Helen Wills
Neuroscience Institute
Deepening our understanding of the brain and the rest of the nervous system through original research and neurotechnology innovation, and training the next generation of neuroscientists.
The Helen Wills
Neuroscience Institute
Deepening our understanding of the brain and the rest of the nervous system through original research and neurotechnology innovation, and training the next generation of neuroscientists.
An image of dendritic spines on neurons in the mouse cortex, produced using new microscopy technology developed by HWNI member Eric Betzig.
A Multidisciplinary Approach to Neuroscience
The Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute (HWNI) is the nexus for campus-wide multidisciplinary neuroscience research at UC Berkeley. Our community includes over 70 faculty members in 12 academic departments. This unique cross-departmental structure brings together experts from a variety of fields to use the power of interdisciplinary research to achieve breakthroughs in the study of the brain and nervous system, and to drive the development of novel treatments and technologies. We support our faculty and their labs in their individual research aims, and foster opportunities for collaboration. We also sponsor major research initiatives, run six innovative neurotechnology and research centers, and train the next generation of neuroscientists through our support of the Neuroscience PhD Program.
Latest News
Austin Roorda awarded Rank Prize for Optoelectronics
Congratulations to HWNI member Austin Roorda!
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Samantha Lewis awarded $500,000 grant from Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
Congratulations to HWNI member Samantha Lewis!
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Berkeley scientists discover retinal cells that help stabilize our world view
The Puthussery lab is the first to discover these cells in the primate retina.
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Markita Landry named 2023 Schmidt Science Polymath
Congratulations to HWNI member Markita Landry!
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Samantha Lewis receives 2023 Prytanean Faculty Enrichment Award
Congratulations to HWNI member Samantha Lewis!
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Nature’s poisons: Why we love them and abuse them
New book by HWNI member Noah Whiteman explores the delicious toxins all around us.
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UC Berkeley Nobel laureates Betzig and Schekman write about their research for kids
These HWNI members published in Frontiers for Young Minds, founded by HWNI member Bob Knight.
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Recent Faculty Publications
05
Dec
2023
Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol. 2023 Dec 5:a041512. doi: 10.1101/cshperspect.a041512. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTVision begins in the retina, which extracts salient features from the environment and encodes them in the...
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Neurosci Lett. 2023 Dec 2:137578. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2023.137578. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTPersistent post-ischemic alterations to the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis occur following global cerebral ischemia (GCI) in rodents. However, similar effects on...
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Sci Rep. 2023 Dec 1;13(1):21200. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-48054-z.ABSTRACTTraumatic brain injury (TBI) affects how the brain functions in the short and long term. Resulting patient outcomes across physical, cognitive, and psychological domains...
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PLoS Comput Biol. 2023 Nov 30;19(11):e1011667. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011667. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTDivisive normalization, a prominent descriptive model of neural activity, is employed by theories of neural coding across many different...
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Front Cell Neurosci. 2023 Nov 8;17:1270489. doi: 10.3389/fncel.2023.1270489. eCollection 2023.ABSTRACTAutism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder with increasing prevalence. Over 1,000 risk genes have now been implicated in...
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