Research

The researchers involved in the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience at Caltech are united in their shared goal of deepening our understanding of the brain—the most powerful biological and chemical computing machine—as well as how it works at the most basic level and how it fails because of disease or through the aging process.

Scientists and engineers bring broad expertise to the exploration of the brain's structure and function, and their work builds on Caltech's long history of basic scientific discovery that has fundamentally transformed the landscape in neuroscience.

Using the collaborative and interdisciplinary spirit of the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience as their driving force, Caltech's researchers are working together to probe the circuity and cells, and the molecular, chemical, and electrical pathways that not only orchestrate the transfer of information through the brain, but ultimately influence its inner workings and how it responds when those processes break down. They are investigating the fundamental aspects of perception, of thought, of emotion, and of action, and working to translate what they learn into developing general principles, therapies, and technologies that will improve the human condition. They are looking at brain function at all scales, and studying similar brain processes across species.

At the Chen Institute at Caltech, researchers are not just at the front line of discovery and understanding of the human mind, they are moving that line forward every day, as they work to make the inconceivable possible.