Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute (BCNI)

Mental health and brain disorders, such as depression, addiction or Alzheimer?s disease, are some of the most significant health challenges we face in the 21st century. Mental health disorders are common ? about one third of the population will be directly affected at some stage in life - and can cause severe distress and disability, with significant social and economic impact. Neurodegenerative disorders are less common but they cause dementia with devastating effects on cognition and personality. Overall, the personal and national costs of brain and mental health disorders are enormous and are projected to rise further as the UK population ages. However, we are currently somewhat ignorant about the origins of many of these disorders and the available treatments are, at best, incompletely effective.
The mission of the Behavioural & Clinical Neuroscience Institute, simply put, is to make a fundamental difference to this situation. The BCNI is a group of biological and clinical brain scientists drawn together with a common purpose from many different departments of the University of Cambridge. We have developed a distinctive ?translational? research strategy that involves experimental work with animals as well as humans. We aim to improve scientific understanding of how abnormalities in brain function, cognition and behaviour can lead to clinical disorders. We are also committed to discovering more about how drugs can change brain function, and to driving forward the development of new and more effective medicines for brain and mental health disorders disorders by working closely with partners in industry.
This is an ambitious strategy but we believe that our internationally outstanding track record of achievement over the past 5 years demonstrates that we can make further progress to deliver it. In the next 5-year period we are seeking support for core staff posts and equipment that are necessary to sustain ongoing and innovative research projects aligned with this strategy. The core infrastructural funding of the BCNI will add value to a wide range of projects and build new state-of-the-art capabilities, such as advanced brain imaging techniques for animals and humans, that are critical to maintain scientific momentum. We are also planning to increase the scale and scope of our post-doctoral training programmes to meet the growing demand for a next generation of well-trained young translational neuroscientists. The University of Cambridge is committed to the long-term sustainability of the BCNI?s mission to improve understanding and treatment of brain and mental health disorders.

The Behavioural & Clinical Neuroscience Institute is an interdisciplinary group of neuroscientists in the University of Cambridge working together to understand the behavioural, cognitive and neurobiological basis of psychiatric and neurological disorders with a view to improving treatment of these disorders in the medium term. The proposed research is described in relation to four guiding themes: translation, traits, treatments and training. Translation means combining pre-clinical studies of rodent and primate disease models with experimental medicine studies in healthy volunteers and carefully characterised patients to delineate clear conceptual connections from animal models to clinical syndromes. Traits denotes our intention to identify behavioural and neurobiological markers of disease that may cut across traditional diagnostic boundaries and/or mediate genetic risk for disorders (endophenotypes). It also highlights our focus on mathematical analysis of complex networks (connectomes) in animal and human brain systems. Treatments indicates our long-term scientific focus on neuropsychopharmacology and our growing success in working with industrial partners to evaluate drug mechanisms of action or to apply innovative experimental techniques in the preclinical and early clinical development of new compounds for CNS disorders. Training refers to our plan to build on a strong track record of student achievement in the prior period by creating a distinctive PhD and MPhil training programme in translational neuroscience. Bibliometric and other outcome analysis indicates that the BCNI has already achieved significant international impact in relation to these objectives.

In the next 5 years, we are seeking support to foster and enrich the strong inter-disciplinary research culture of the BCNI, and to build on our underpinning capabilities in relation to PET, animal neurophysiology and MRI, computational neurobiology and neurocognitive genetics. We are requesting direct costs for key administrative, technical and scientific support posts; for 3 PhD studentships per year; and for consumable costs related to the marmoset breeding colony and animal and human neuroimaging. The University of Cambridge is committed strategically to the mission and sustainability of the BCNI and this is reflected both by several major infrastructural investments in the previous period and by a substantial financial contribution to the next period of funding.

On this basis, we anticipate making a meaningful difference to the understanding and treatment of a wide range of mental health and brain disorders, including addiction, ADHD, neurodegenerative disorders, OCD, depression and psychosis.