The Center Of Research Excellence in the Cognitive Science
The Reconstructive Mind: From Percept to Memory and Back
Our center investigates the codes, representations and mechanisms used by the brain in perception, memory, action and imagining. We are guided by the premise that our percepts create our memories but our memories also shape our percepts. Our approach is to develop new capabilities to monitor in detail activity in networks of nerve cells in the behaving human brain over time and space, and correlate this activity with specific cognitive states, emotions and actions. We hope to promote the understanding, prevention, diagnosis and amelioration of brain pathologies on the one hand, and the development of advanced smart computers and intelligent robots on the other. Our team of investigators conducts research at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Tel-Aviv University, Bar-Ilan University, and Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center. We also recruit a selected number of outstanding young investigators that are integrated into the aforementioned partner institutions.
Scientific Management:
- Prof. Yadin Dudai, Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science (Scientific Director)
- Prof. Itzchak Fried, Neurosurgery, Tel Aviv University and the Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center
- Prof. Talma Hendler, Psychology and Psychiatry, Tel Aviv University and the Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center
- Prof. Michal Lavidor, Psychology, Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center' Bar-Ilan University
- Prof. Rafael Malach, Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science
The Conceptual Framework:
Understanding the brain is the most daring scientific challenge of the 21st century. It could allow us to better comprehend human behavior, preempt and ameliorate mental disease and cognitive decline, and develop brain-inspired powerful computers and intelligent robots that could prove highly beneficial to individuals and societies. The brain revolution is expected to make us healthier, our economies richer, and our cultures more rewarding and enjoyable. But given the immense complexities of the human brain, the task is daunting indeed. How shall we proceed to disentangle the mystery?
To understand how the brain works, we must decipher its internal language, i.e., the messages that the billions of nerve cells send every second of our life to their partners over billions of bustling contact points. The science of the brain has not yet been able to achieve this goal. Indeed, we already have the capability to eavesdrop to some internal conversations in the brain, but the language is foreign to us and even when we think that we can pick up on some meaning, it is often fragmentary and lost in translation. Brain scientists resemble intelligence officers operating a listening station that intercepts a complex encrypted exchange, but lacking the key to the code. The goal of our newly established Center of Research Excellence in the Cognitive Sciences, is to decipher the code and take it from there to understand what goes wrong in disease and what can be adapted to be used in new technologies. Our approach is to develop new capabilities to monitor in detail electrical activity in networks of nerve cells within the thinking, imagining and behaving brain, integrate the intercepted messages over time and space, and correlate them with specific cognitive states, emotions and actions. In doing this, we expect to generate modern ‘Rosetta stones’, that will enable us to translate the hieroglyphs of brain activity into comprehensible information and mechanisms.
In our center we have a unmatched set of cutting-edge technologies to perform this, and our program is to enhance this technology even further. Our team of investigators combines experienced Israeli world-leaders with cherry-picked top-notch young Israeli scientists that we bring back home from their positions in top universities abroad. Our combination of wide-spectrum brain imaging technologies and multidisciplinary expertise, augmented by a research program favoring out-of-the-box thinking and reduced red-tape, is unique world-wide. We expect this program to advance further the capability to imagine brain function and combine it with the computational knowledge required to tell us what distinct brain activity signatures mean in terms of perception, imagining, decision making and action, and how to mend brain functions if they go wrong.
Our center investigates the codes, representations and mechanisms used by the brain in perception, memory, action and imagining. We are guided by the premise that our percepts create our memories but our memories also shape our percepts. Our approach is to develop new capabilities to monitor in detail activity in networks of nerve cells in the behaving human brain over time and space, and correlate this activity with specific cognitive states, emotions and actions. We hope to promote the understanding, prevention, diagnosis and amelioration of brain pathologies on the one hand, and the development of advanced smart computers and intelligent robots on the other. Our team of investigators conducts research at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Tel-Aviv University, Bar-Ilan University, and Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center. We also recruit a selected number of outstanding young investigators that are integrated into the aforementioned partner institutions.
Scientific Management:
- Prof. Yadin Dudai, Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science (Scientific Director)
- Prof. Itzchak Fried, Neurosurgery, Tel Aviv University and the Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center
- Prof. Talma Hendler, Psychology and Psychiatry, Tel Aviv University and the Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center
- Prof. Michal Lavidor, Psychology, Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center' Bar-Ilan University
- Prof. Rafael Malach, Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science
The Conceptual Framework:
Understanding the brain is the most daring scientific challenge of the 21st century. It could allow us to better comprehend human behavior, preempt and ameliorate mental disease and cognitive decline, and develop brain-inspired powerful computers and intelligent robots that could prove highly beneficial to individuals and societies. The brain revolution is expected to make us healthier, our economies richer, and our cultures more rewarding and enjoyable. But given the immense complexities of the human brain, the task is daunting indeed. How shall we proceed to disentangle the mystery?
To understand how the brain works, we must decipher its internal language, i.e., the messages that the billions of nerve cells send every second of our life to their partners over billions of bustling contact points. The science of the brain has not yet been able to achieve this goal. Indeed, we already have the capability to eavesdrop to some internal conversations in the brain, but the language is foreign to us and even when we think that we can pick up on some meaning, it is often fragmentary and lost in translation. Brain scientists resemble intelligence officers operating a listening station that intercepts a complex encrypted exchange, but lacking the key to the code. The goal of our newly established Center of Research Excellence in the Cognitive Sciences, is to decipher the code and take it from there to understand what goes wrong in disease and what can be adapted to be used in new technologies. Our approach is to develop new capabilities to monitor in detail electrical activity in networks of nerve cells within the thinking, imagining and behaving brain, integrate the intercepted messages over time and space, and correlate them with specific cognitive states, emotions and actions. In doing this, we expect to generate modern ‘Rosetta stones’, that will enable us to translate the hieroglyphs of brain activity into comprehensible information and mechanisms.
In our center we have a unmatched set of cutting-edge technologies to perform this, and our program is to enhance this technology even further. Our team of investigators combines experienced Israeli world-leaders with cherry-picked top-notch young Israeli scientists that we bring back home from their positions in top universities abroad. Our combination of wide-spectrum brain imaging technologies and multidisciplinary expertise, augmented by a research program favoring out-of-the-box thinking and reduced red-tape, is unique world-wide. We expect this program to advance further the capability to imagine brain function and combine it with the computational knowledge required to tell us what distinct brain activity signatures mean in terms of perception, imagining, decision making and action, and how to mend brain functions if they go wrong.