The Weizmann Institute of Science consistently stands at the vanguard of neuroscience research, offering wide focus areas ranging from molecular and cellular neuroscience to cognitive and computational neuroscience. Using innovative experimental and computational methodologies, our researchers are investigating some of neuroscience's most critical questions, covering a breadth of topics that include neural circuits and behavior, neurobiology of stress, brain development and plasticity, and computational neuroscience. Our research approach has always been inherently multidisciplinary, and embracing novel research techniques remains crucial to maintain our leading position in the field.
The adoption of AI tools in neuroscience presents a twofold advantage. On one hand, specialized AI models will be instrumental in transcending the resolution of single neurons, allowing us to start to uncover the grammar of activity in very large neural populations and to understand the semantic organization and decoding of these neural codes. This will, in turn, enable us to use AI to write information into neural circuits and build synthetic neural circuits with desired functions, as well as create new, adaptive, and personally optimized interfaces between the brain and AI/machine learning models and hardware.
However, achieving this involves overcoming substantial challenges, such as dealing with the unfathomable number of potential connections in the human brain. For instance, a network of merely 100 neurons can connect in more ways than there are atoms in the universe. How do we learn the principles of these communications by examining only a fraction of all possibilities? Further, we must explore how AI can address the vast variability between different brains. This endeavor also presents unique challenges regarding the possible connection and interactions between biological and artificial brains.
Ultimately, our research aims to map and harness the parallels and differences between biological and artificial intelligence. This pursuit promises to bring about a revolutionary understanding of intelligence — what it is, how it functions in health and disease, how it can be synthetically constructed, and how computers can interface with the brain to repair, enhance, and augment its capabilities.