In the current early phase, ICPBR has 4 laboratories, mainly dedicated into studies in the field of systems neuroscience, as well as in developments of multidisciplinary and multiscale methodologies, combining functional MRI with electrophysiology, neurochemistry, development of bio-responsive contrast agents, and in vivo anatomical connectivity studies. The research projects include understanding the physiological mechanisms underlying generative visual perception and object recognition, multisensory integration, learning, memory and memory consolidation, dynamic organization of the visual system, sensory representation and auto-regulation of the physiological condition of the body, i.e. interoception, autonomic regulation of interoception, as well as studies of neuromodulation.

Each laboratory has already a number of students, postdocs and research scientists, and the labs are expected to be fully active in the beginning of 2024. In the coming year we expect to recruit another 5 to 10 Principal Investigators from Europe, USA and China, who are also well-established system neuroscientists.

The prevailing global aim of the institute is to generate optimal conditions for interactions and synergistic activities among laboratories. By exploiting diverse research experiences, we believe, the probability of fathoming into the processes of self-organization of brain systems increases significantly. Despite of advances in understanding how individual cells and molecules function to regulate activity of the brain and nervous system, we still lack an integrative, comprehensive understanding of the dynamic connectivity, the states, and the initial-condition-dependent state-evolutions of neural networks, which most likely underly all our cognitive capacities. It goes without saying that all of the above  will now be eventually combined with methods of cloning that produce genetically uniform primates with targeted disease-phenotypes. Correct system evaluation surely greatly depends on gaining information related to functional profiles of default and modified anatomical and functional complexes.

In parallel,  a dominant aim of this institute is the internationalization. Evidently, the highly diverse expertise and resources in different countries minimize duplication of efforts, maximize reproducibility of results, and standardize data collection and sharing. Internationalization will enormously increase the synergistic interactions between experts, promote interdisciplinary approaches in neuroscience, and strongly improve the training across different fields, that interactively will drive the neuroscience world in a plethora of discoveries and innovations.

Last but not least, experimental science in the ICPBR will definitely develop a strong interplay with colleagues in computational and theoretical fields, aiming the development and application of mathematical models - used in physics for complex dynamic systems – of the highly adaptive and multi-nested biological systems. We are deeply in agreement with the Canadian philosopher and cognitive scientist Paul Thagard, who alleged that “Experiment without theory is blind, but theory without experiment is empty”. Yes, indeed.