About Michigan Neuroscience Institute

For more than 65 years, a groundbreaking institute housed at the University of Michigan has been at the forefront of driving research fundamental to our understanding of the function – and dysfunction – of the human brain. As this field of study, now known as neuroscience (a term first coined at the University of Michigan in the early 1960s) has evolved, so have our institute’s name and our organizational structure.

The newly named Michigan Neuroscience Institute (MNI) continues to be a leader in innovative, collaborative, and visionary research in the areas of brain science and brain impacting diseases. Formerly known as the Mental Health Research Institute (1955-2005) and the Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute (2005-2019), MNI’s research encompasses disciplines from affective neuroscience, to cognitive neuroscience to developmental neurobiology, signaling, neurogenetics/genomics and neuro-informatics. MNI’s cross-disciplinary research portfolio reflects the full range of basic and translational projects from molecular analyses to animal models to human applications.

MNI’s inclusive and far-reaching enterprise houses 19 research groups with ties to the Biological Chemistry, Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics, Human Genetics, Pharmacology, Physiology, Psychiatry, Psychology, Internal Medicine, and Neurology Departments. These 19 primary MNI faculty are integral to the effort to build bridges to other units within Michigan Medicine and across the U-M campus. The MNI invests in synergistic infrastructure and recruitment aimed at enriching neuroscience across the institution. Thus, new initiatives will establish a virtual reach across the across the University of Michigan (U-M) campus with an affiliation model.