The Swartz Center

The Swartz Foundation sponsors a Center that fosters collaborative research and inter- disciplinary training in Computational and Systems Neuroscience at Yale. This Center was founded and directed by Xiao-Jing Wang from 2006 – 2012 and is currently directed by Jess Cardin and Steve Zucker.

Recent years have seen great strides in our understanding of sensory processing and plasticity at the cellular and molecular levels. A major challenge today is to firmly establish general principles of neural network function in the context of detailed neural mechanisms of basic cognitive functions.

Theory, computational modeling, and systems neuroscience play a critical role in this enterprise, especially in studies of neural circuits, which we believe hold the key to understanding the chain of causal links from molecules to complex and flexible behaviors. Topics of active research in this Program include attention and working memory, decision making, reinforcement learning, timing, variability and synchrony of neural activity, quantitative models for neural development and function, and sensory processing in naturalistic environments.

The core faculty consists of several labs that share a common goal of using computational and theoretical tools to elucidate the cellular mechanisms and neural dynamics underlying brain functions. We welcome new members of the Yale community whose work involves computational or theoretical approaches to join us.