Founding Director: Xiangmin Xu, PhD
Our Vision: Cure Diseases of the Brain
Welcome to the UC Irvine Center for Neural Circuit Mapping, where our pioneering team is taking the revolutionary step of mapping the human brain in unprecedented molecular detail. Understanding the brain’s neural circuitry is critical to advance therapies for devastating diseases of the brain – like Alzheimer’s, autism, depression and epilepsy – that rob the patient of their ability to engage with loved ones and the world around them.
Our team’s work will have the potential to identify early warning signs of these disorders when they are still treatable. In fact, in a recent key breakthrough, our team of experts discovered ways to reopen windows of neural development in adults, paving the way for previously unthinkable remedies. This is truly remarkable and is just the beginning of the innovations our team will be able to unlock.
The Center for Neural Circuit Mapping has emerged as a hub for new technologies and resources for biomedical research at UC Irvine. With our team leading so many advances in this significant field of research, the time has come for our Center to establish a Translational Neuroscience Program. The program has been selected as one of 12 high-impact research programs that will be located in the Falling Leaves Foundation Medical Innovation Building.
In This New Facility
Our Competitive Advantage
Empowered by the distinctive One Health approach of UC Irvine Health Affairs that transcends disciplinary boundaries, the Center for Neural Circuit Mapping will comprise faculty and staff from the Susan & Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences which includes the schools of medicine, nursing, pharmacy & pharmaceutical sciences, population & public health and UCI Health, our regional healthcare delivery system partnered with the Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute. With brilliant minds working together instead of in silos, our teams will push the boundaries of innovation and facilitate fundamental discoveries in science, medicine, health and wellness.
Our researchers include neuroscientists, engineers, virologists, computer scientists and mathematicians, all working together to advance our study of neural circuits. This level of detailed brain mapping will empower our team to define the mechanisms and pathways that underlie neurodevelopmental, neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. All focused on one goal: to cure diseases of the brain.
With this initiative comes significant synergies with the Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute. One such example is that the Center for Neural Circuit Mapping will contribute to the Institute’s mission by establishing a powerful acupuncture research program. Our published, ongoing and proposed brain mapping studies are important for determining the neural and molecular mechanisms of acupuncture effects.
The brain map that we develop will point disease researchers in the right direction. Ultimately, this information might help us design gene therapies that target only the cell populations where treatment is needed – delivering the right genes to the right place at the right time.
Xiangmin Xu, PhD
Director, Center for Neural Circuit Mapping
Chancellor’s Professor, Anatomy & Neurobiology
UC Irvine School of Medicine
Join Us in Making an Impact
We are seeking philanthropic partners to establish a home for the UC Irvine Center for Neural Circuit Mapping Translational Neuroscience Program in the Falling Leaves Foundation Medical Innovation Building, and to support our programmatic funding to achieve transformational discoveries.
