Munich Center for NeuroSciences - Brain and Mind
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About the Center

MCN Brochure (pdf)

MUS_Broschuere_Titel-resizedThe Munich Center for Neurosciences – Brain & Mind (MCN) was founded in 2005 to create a local network in and around Munich that connects all groups and disciplines with interests related to questions of neurobiology, cognition, and “brain & mind”. The center provides a platform for interdisciplinary interactions, supports the establishment of new collaborative research programs and has developed a teaching concept that attracts excellent students at all levels of training. The program M.Sc. Neurosciences was initiated and generously funded within the framework of the Elite Network of Bavaria, and the Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences Ph.D. program, founded via the German Excellence Initiative. Both teaching entities were fundamentally inspired by the MCN Teaching Concept. Also research consortia like the SFB 870: Assembly and Function of Neuronal Circuits in Sensory Processing, a Collaborative Research Center resulted from scientific interactions of many members of the MCN, plus several other research and training networks such as the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience (BCCN) Munich. The SFB 870 very successfully facilitated research for 13 years and ended in 2022 after reaching its maximally extended end of funding period III. Furthermore, several Research Training Groups, e.g. 1091 Orientation & Motion in Space and 2175 'Perception in Context and its Neural Basis' had profited greatly from established networks within MCN and its teaching concept. This only begins to exemplify how MCN fosters the city of Munich as an internationally attractive site for training and research in neurosciences.

lmu_7738In Munich, research related to neurosciences spans a wide spectrum of current investigation areas, ranging from neural stem cells and the molecular mechanisms of early brain development, via cellular and systems neurobiology (including neurology), neurocognition and behavior (including “theory of mind”), to epistemology, philosophy of science, logic, and ethics. It involves numerous research groups working in various institutes and departments of the LMU (in particular biology, medicine, philosophy, and psychology), most of them in close collaboration with the Max Planck Institutes of Biological Intelligence (in foundation) and Psychiatry, the institutes of the Helmholtz Center Munich (HMGU), several institutes at the Technical University of Munich (TUM; electrical engineering, medicine, physics, life sciences), as well as with the computer industry.

MCN was implemented to make Munich, with its multitude of expertise, not only one of the real “hot spots” in the neurosciences but also one of the few neuroscience hubs where the bridge from experimental neurobiology to the philosophy of brain & mind can be competently spanned.