JARA-BRAIN Institutes

The JARA-BRAIN institutes were founded in order to consolidate collaboration between Aachen and Jülich in the field of neuroscience and to strengthen strategic development. The institutes serve the goal of optimizing the interaction of clinical and basic research in several institutes with different complementary priorities in order to facilitate translational research.

By jointly managing existing infrastructure and jointly planning, applying for, and procuring future infrastructure, the scientific output of the existing configuration is consolidated and increased, and prospects for realizing large-scale projects in the field of neuroscience research are optimized and strengthened.

The JARA institutes are headed collegially by several directors. The heads of institute are also JARA-Professors.

Foundation strategy:
In its neuroscientific research, JARA-BRAIN focuses on a spectrum ranging from a molecular consideration up to the level of complex systems, driven by questions from psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry, and neurology. The aim is to create an entire spectrum of expertise, from basic research right up to clinical studies and therapeutic applications. Priorities are thus found both in basic research, including methodological development and refinement, and also in clinical trials. This intensive linkage of basic research and clinical aspects can only be achieved by integrating the organization and staff. This means that the JARA-BRAIN institutes combine basic, methodological, and clinical expertise in one institute.

In these areas of work, the core competences of JARA-BRAIN are represented and strategically developed. They comprise above all research into molecular as well as structural and functional imaging for psychological and neurological disorders, with medium-term prospects of achieving significant results by means of a cooperation with computational neuroscience. The appointment of the two professors, Diesmann and Carloni, envisaged as directors for the foundation of the institutes, ensures considerable expertise in this field from the very beginning.