Skip to main content

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.   

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.

Learn More
PhD Program
Newsletter Sign-up

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 five innovative neurotechnology and research centers, and train the next generation of neuroscientists through our Neuroscience PhD Program and the training of postdoctoral fellows who conduct research in HWNI faculty labs. We also have over 100 PhD Program alumni who work in a variety of careers across the globe.

Latest News

Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience researchers win awards, publish new research

Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience researchers win awards, publish new research

Congratulations to HWNI faculty members Fritz Sommer, Bruno Olshausen, and members of their labs!
Read More
Austin Roorda awarded Rank Prize for Optoelectronics

Austin Roorda awarded Rank Prize for Optoelectronics

Congratulations to HWNI member Austin Roorda!
Read More
Samantha Lewis awarded $500,000 grant from Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

Samantha Lewis awarded $500,000 grant from Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

Congratulations to HWNI member Samantha Lewis!
Read More
Berkeley scientists discover retinal cells that help stabilize our world view

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.
Read More
Markita Landry named 2023 Schmidt Science Polymath

Markita Landry named 2023 Schmidt Science Polymath

Congratulations to HWNI member Markita Landry!
Read More
Samantha Lewis receives 2023 Prytanean Faculty Enrichment Award

Samantha Lewis receives 2023 Prytanean Faculty Enrichment Award

Congratulations to HWNI member Samantha Lewis!
Read More
Nature’s poisons: Why we love them and abuse them

Nature’s poisons: Why we love them and abuse them

New book by HWNI member Noah Whiteman explores the delicious toxins all around us.
Read More
UC Berkeley Nobel laureates Betzig and Schekman write about their research for kids

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.
Read More

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...
Read More
04 Dec 2023
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...
Read More
01 Dec 2023
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...
Read More
30 Nov 2023
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...
Read More
29 Nov 2023
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...
Read More
View More Publications