Overview
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is home to one of the world’s premier research communities in neuroscience. In the mid-1980s, our faculty elected to focus resources on the visual system as a model for studies of brain structure and function. To that end, we have systematically expanded our vision research center over the past two decades; cultivating research programs that employ a variety of experimental approaches—molecular, genetic, cellular, systems, and computational—and address the neural structures and events that underlie visual sensation, perception, cognition, visually guided behavior, visual plasticity, learning, memory and development.
The product of this development is the Center for the Neurobiology of Vision, which was designated as a basic research center by the National Eye Institute in 2009. Thomas Albright is the director of the Center, which is comprised of 15 independent investigators.
These research programs are extraordinarily well integrated and complementary and—not surprisingly—they compose a scientific community that has been highly productive and progressive in its approach, with an unusual degree of collaboration on topics of shared interest.