National Brain Research Centre: National Brain Research Centre One of the major mandates of NBRC is to network the existing neuroscience groups/institutions in the country and promote multidisciplinary research in neuroscience. The networking of the existing neuroscience centres with NBRC is aimed to prevent unnecessary duplication of the work and facilities already existing. At the same time it would facilitate sharing of expertise and available infrastructure for mutual benefit. It would help to bring together researchers from varying backgrounds to pursue common objectives that may be beyond the capacity of an individual investigator, group or institution. This is important since the major achievements in neuroscience will have to be made through a multidisciplinary approach bringing together scientists working in different disciplines into the main stream of neuroscience and brain research activity
Networking
The networking would be achieved in three ways:
1. information sharing through electronic network,
2. identifying "Collaborating" centres for mutual interaction and
3. establishing Satellite Centre which may be set up in different parts of the country as and when the need arises and resources are available. "The collaborating centres" would be laboratories, which are involved in out-standing neuroscience or allied research elsewhere in the country and whose research interests are mutually complementary. Such collaborating centres could be laboratories within an institute or could also be a whole institute if multiple departments in an institute plan to collaborate with NBRC. Their programme of work could be supported by NBRC both financially and intellectually on the basis of MOU. "Satellite centers" would be an integral component of NBRC and will be governed by the rules and regulations of NBRC and therefore, would be funded through the NBRC budget. It may be pointed out that DBT would continue to support individual research projects in neuroscience as at present. The extra-mural programme of NBRC would be driven by the mandate of NBRC.
Human Resource Development
NBRC is mandated to play a major role in the human resource development in neuroscience. For this purpose in addition to the in-house academic programmes, NBRC has already promoted the initiation of a M.Sc. course in neuroscience at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. Other such programmes to be established with NBRC support are being negotiated. NBRC has established several Post-doctoral fellowships in different centres in the country. In addition NBRC coordinates and sponsors several intensive hands-on workshops in the different areas of neuroscience. These activities are being initiated to develop adequate human resources in brain research.
Courses Offered:
Phd
International Collaboration
These areas of research at NBRC are being developed so as to capitalise on the strengths existing in the country and seek international collaboration as and when needed. The international collaboration is mediated through the existing memorandum of understanding (MOUs) that have been signed with the National Institute of Mental Health, USA and the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan and more such collaborations would be developed when necessary. Research scientists at NBRC and its networked centres would be encouraged to collaborate with scientists from both India and abroad.
Centralized Facility for Neuroscience Research
To support these activities it is proposed that major infrastructure facilities such as imaging laboratories (consisting of functional magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography, optical imaging etc.), transgenic and knock out animal facility and DNA microarray facility be set-up at the main centre. These facilities would be developed in a manner such that scientists from all the networked centres would have access to the infrastructure developed at the main campus. Thus, NBRC is being developed as a frontier institute for neuroscience research, which would not only provide these facilities to the scientists working in-house but also make them available to other scientists in the country. In addition a Distributed Information Centre which would provide access to neuroscience literature to all the networked centres is also being set up.