Neuroscience

The Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience (Kavli IFN) at UCSF will focus initially on understanding brain plasticity, the remarkable capacity of the brain to modify its structure and function.

The Kavli IFN will partner with engineers at two San Francisco Bay-area national laboratories to develop new tools and approaches to brain research.“UCSF scientists have made some of the seminal discoveries in modern neuroscience,” said UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood, MBBS. “The Kavli Institute will sustain this rich tradition into the 21st Century.”

University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) has one of the largest neuroscience complexes in the world including the Sandler Neurosciences Center and Rock Hall. UCSF is ranked by NIH as the #1 department of neurology at US medical schools.

Research is done by the faculty in the Neuroscience Graduate Program and many centers including the UCSF Memory and Aging Center and the Center for Integrative Neuroscience. Affiliated centers include research at San Francisco Medical Centers and the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disorders.

The Neuroscape Lab is a unique environment to create and validate novel neurodiagnostics and neurotherapeutics using newly emerging technology with the primary goal of driving rapid translation of neuroscience to real-world solutions. The Glass Brain visualization is one of the lab's projects.

It is being developed as a core research facility at the UCSF Neuroscience Imaging Center (NIC) under the direction of Dr. Adam Gazzaley.

Principal Investigator: John L. R. Rubenstein
UCSF Neuroscience
Title: "Identification of enhancers whose activity defines cortical interneuron types"
BRAIN Category: Tools for Cells and Circuits (RFA MH-14-216)

Dr. Rubenstein and colleagues plan to identify enhancer molecules specific to particular types of interneurons – that relay neural signals – and use this information to profile distinct cell types and new ways to manipulate genes.

Part 2 of 3) Arnold Kriegstein, M.D., Ph.D., spoke at the "Spotlight on Parkinson's Disease," an educational event presented at the CIRM Governing Board meeting on May 7, 2008. Kriegstein reviewed the limitations of previous Parkinson's clinical trials and discussed the prospects for stem cell-based cell replacement therapies for Parkinson's disease.

Video published on June 11, 2011 by California Institute for Regenerative Medicine

Principal Investigator: John L. R. Rubenstein
UCSF Neuroscience

The goal of Rubenstein Lab research is to elucidate fundamental mechanisms that regulate development of the forebrain, with a focus on the cerebral cortex and basal ganglia. Our studies also extend into other regions of the embryo, including the developing face. Whenever possible, we attempt to investigate whether disruption of these mechanisms underlie human disorders, such as autism, schizophrenia, mental retardation, epilepsy and craniofacial disorders.

Professor of Psychiatry and Child Psychiatry, UC San Francisco
Director, Rubenstein Lab

Rubenstein's research focuses on the regulatory genes that orchestrate development of the forebrain. His lab has demonstrated the role of specific genes in regulating neuronal specification, differentiation, migration and axon growth during embryonic development and on through adult life. His work may help to explain some of the mechanisms underlying human neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism.

Director, Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research, UC San Francisco
Department of Neurology

Kriegstein's research in our lab focuses on the way in which neural stem and progenitor cells produce neurons, and ways in which this information can be used for cell based therapies to treat diseases of the nervous system. He has found that radial glial cells, long thought to simply guide nerve cells during migration, are neuronal stem cells in the developing brain.

Principal Investigator: Loren Frank
UCSF Neuroscience

The Frank Lab's goal is to understand how activity and plasticity in neural circuits underlie both learning and the ability to use learned information to make decisions. In particular, our laboratory focuses on the circuitry of the hippocampus and anatomically related regions. We use a combination of techniques, including large scale multielectrode recording, targeted optogenetic interventions and behavioral manipulations of awake, behaving animals to understand how the brain learns and remembers.

Core Faculty, Program in Biological Sciences, UCSF Physiology Department
Director: Frank Laboratory

Frank's research interests center around learning and spatial coding in the hippocampal-cortical circuit. Frank is interested in understanding the neural correlates of learning and memory. In particular, his laboratory focuses on the circuitry of the hippocampus and adjacent regions. His goal is to examine the relationships among neural firing patterns, behavior, and anatomy to understand how the brain uses and stores information.

Director: Arnold Kriegstein
UCSF Neuroscience

The Center's organization is designed to foster collaborations derived from work on different organs and tissue systems. Accordingly, the laboratories and research efforts are organized along a series of pipelines, each focusing on a particular tissue or organ system, and including basic research as well as translational research directed toward clinical applications. A basic researcher and a clinician direct each pipeline

Principal Investigator: Loren M Frank
Sandler Neurosciences Center, UC San Francisco
Title: " Modular systems for measuring and manipulating brain activity"
BRAIN Category: Large-Scale Recording-Modulation - New Technologies (RFA NS-14-007)

Dr. Frank and his colleagues will engineer a next-generation, all-in-one neural recording and stimulating system, which can simultaneously monitor thousands of neurons in the brain for several months while also delivering drugs, light or electrical pulses.

Principal Investigator: Arnold Kriegstein
UCSF Neuroscience
Title: "Mapping the Developing Human Neocortex by Massively Parallel Single Cell Analysis"
BRAIN Category: Census of Cell Types (RFA MH-14-215)

By combining genetic, molecular and physiological techniques at the single cell level, Dr. Kriegstein and colleagues will classify diverse cell types in the prefrontal cortex of developing human brain tissue.