The mission of the Center for Integrative
Neuroscience and Neuroengineering Research (CINNR) is to foster
research in systems and behavioral neuroscience at the University
of Chicago and neural engineering at Illinois
Institute of Technology.
Work in the Center proceeds from basic science
and clinical efforts and emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches to understanding
the nervous system. Research in the Center involves a wide range of
projects, but five research goals are currently emphasized:
 1. To understand how information is coded
by large populations of nerve cells or neurons. This involves collaborative
efforts between neuroscientists, mathematicians, statisticians,
and computer scientists.
2. To use developing knowledge about neural codes to design and
implement neural prosthetic devices (or brain machine interfaces)
that can be implanted in the retina or visual centers of the central
nervous system. Such devices can ameliorate the loss of vision,
and can be implanted in the motor cortex and used to control movements
in paralyzed patients.
3. To increase our understanding of the basic causes of epilepsy,
to develop new technologies that allow the prediction of epileptic
seizures and the location of epileptic tissue in the brain, and
to use brain machine interfaces to control seizures.
 4. To use neuroimaging technologies to understand how cognitive
behaviors are coded in the human brain.
5. To use methods from molecular biology to understand how events
at the molecular level are related to normal behaviors and to disease
states such as Alzheimer's disease, drug or alcohol abuse or psychiatric
disorders.
The Center is formed around the Pritzker
Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the Illinois Institute of
Technology and the Committee on Computational Neuroscience at
the University of Chicago. CINNR is located on IIT's campus at
3255 S. Dearborn, Wishnick Hall 314. Phone: 312.567.5324.
Learn more about the scientists and engineers
working in the center and the research projects that they are engaged
in. |
