Institute for Systems Neuroscience

The Institute for Systems Neuroscience (Norwegian: Institutt for systemnevrovitenskap) is a neuroscience research center at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. The Institute for Systems Neuroscience coexists with the Centre for Neural Computation (Norwegian: Senter for nevrale nettverk), but the scope of the institute is broader and more long-term.

The stated scientific goal is "to advance our understanding of neural circuits and systems and their role in generating psychological functions. By focusing on spatial representation and memory, we expect to uncover general principles of neural network computation in the mammalian cortex."

The institute was founded by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) with additional financial support from The Kavli Foundation, a private organization. Since its establishment in 2007, the institute was closely affiliated with the university’s Centre for the Biology of Memory (CBM) where the discovery of "grid cells" was made in 2005. The CBM was established in 2002 and financed as a Center of Excellence by the Research Council of Norway in 2002–2012. After the CBM funding was over in December 2012, the Research Council appointed a new Centre of Excellence at the institute with funding until 2022, thus establishing the Centre for Neural Computation (CNC) in January 2013. The CNC co-exists with the institute which complements the shorter-term projects at CBM/CNC, pursuing questions that demand a longer experimental time frame, aimed, ultimately, "to improve life and health by advancing the science of human cognition".

The institute is headed by Edvard Moser while May-Britt Moser heads the CNC centre. In 2014, the Mosers together with John O'Keefe received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain".

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