Credit: Joseph Campanale

The brain is a tissue. It is a complicated, intricately woven tissue, like nothing else we know of in the universe, but it is composed of cells, as any tissue is. They are, to be sure, highly specialized cells, but they function according to the laws that govern any other cells. Their electrical and chemical signals can be detected, recorded and interpreted and their chemicals can be identified; the connections that constitute the brain's woven feltwork can be mapped. In short, the brain can be studied, just as the kidney can.

- David H. Hubel

NRI is a group of investigators whose collective goal is to create an intellectual atmosphere conducive to exploration at the frontiers of human knowledge where disciplinary boundaries disappear. Investigators in the NRI recognize that the interests of neuroscience extend broadly from repair and prevention of human disease to the principles that underlie the earliest nervous systems, from the human mind to the single molecular building blocks of the brain.