Interdisciplinary Center For Neural Computation

Interdisciplinary Center For Neural Computation

The Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation (Hebrew: המרכז הבינתחומי לחישוביות עצבית‎) of the Hebrew University (ICNC) is the home of a world-renowned group of scientists focusing on the central questions as to "how the brain computes." ICNC was established in 1992 to provide an inter-face for interactive research in Neurobiology, Physics and Applied Physics Computer Science and Psychophysics with the objective of increasing the understanding of how the brain works with specific focus on computational aspects of the nervous system. ICNC has 'state of the art' facilities for studying and modeling the nervous system at its different levels, from single neuron computation to signal processing in small and large cortical networks, to the system and the behavioral level. This is backed up by critical mass of 26 faculty members that make ICNC an outstanding facility in European terms.

The ICNC groups work tightly together, using experimental and theoretical approaches ranging from molecular techniques, in vitro intracellular using DIC video microscopy and imaging methods with voltage-dependent dyes; in vivo multi-unit recordings in behaving animals and imaging techniques using fMRI. Theoretical approaches include cable and compartmental modeling, information and learning theory, statistical mechanics and techniques from signal processing theory.

A number of research centers in Europe, USA and Japan are now following the model established by the ICNC, including the Institute for Neuroinformatics (ETH/Univ. Zürich), Laboratories de Neurophysique (Univ. Paris V, Paris), the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit (UCL, London), each of whom have sent missions to ICNC. The ICNC faculty members are intensely involved in teaching the 60 Ph.D. students at the prestigious “Ph.D. program for Neural Computation” and in supervising the Ph.D. theses of a total of 120 Ph.D. students (50% female). ICNC faculty co-founded, co-direct and teach at the yearly “EC advanced course in Computational Neuroscience” (Crete/Greece, Trieste/Italy and Obidos/ Portugal). The ICNC is well experienced in hosting international post-docs, sabbatical fellows and short-term visitors. The flow of 32 visitors (mostly at their Ph.D. and early post-doc training period) during the first 15 months of the EU grant under the 5th framework is a demonstration for the attractiveness of the ICNC facility to European users.