MRC Brain Network Dynamics Unit

The Medical Research Council Brain Network Dynamics Unit at the University of Oxford (MRC BNDU) is a strategic partnership between the Medical Research Council and the University of Oxford. The MRC BNDU is exceptional across the world in placing research on the temporal dynamics of brain networks at the hub of discovery and treatment. The MRC BNDU opened in April 2015, with Professor Peter Brown as its Founding Director. Professor Peter Magill is now Unit Director. The MRC BNDU operates over three sites affiliated with the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences and the Department of Engineering Science. Our ultimate goal is to develop recurrent Brain Computer Interfaces that selectively and strategically target circuit malfunctions in neurological and psychiatric disorders. To realise this, we will define the cellular basis of network dynamics and their disturbance at the levels of microcircuits, scale up from these insights to explain systems behaviour and phenotype, and develop and implement spatiotemporally-patterned neuronal manipulation for therapy. The MRC BNDU is unique in having as its goal the development of novel therapeutic approaches for the correction of identified pathological neuronal network dynamics in distributed and complex systems across the brain, whilst integrating linked clinical and animal model studies. Our goal is challenging, and will take time to realise fully. Nevertheless, our choice of two major sets of brain circuits, the neocortical-hippocampal-amygdala system and the basal ganglia-thalamocortical system, ensures that our research strategy is focused and tractable.