Core facility and knowledge hub
At the Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging advanced technology collides with innovative neuro- and clinical sciences.
The Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging is a core research facility and knowledge hub of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) and the Amsterdam University Medical Center (UMC) – locations AMC and VUmc. Within these institutes, the Spinoza Centre is embedded in the Amsterdam UMC Research Imaging Core Center (RICC), Amsterdam Neuroscience, and the VU Institute Brain and Behaviour Amsterdam (iBBA).
The Spinoza Centre offers its ultra-sensitive MRI-scanners to over four hundred researchers in the Amsterdam region for their fundamental research into the workings of the brain and brain disorders. The Spinoza Centre also welcomes academic and industrial research programs in areas other than the brain.
The Centre houses a 3 Tesla and an ultra-high field 7 Tesla MRI-scanner. Ultra-high field MRI visualizes the brain at unprecedented high resolution, in terms of function, anatomy, connectivity and metabolism in the living human brain. The Spinoza 7T MRI is the most powerful MRI machine in the Amsterdam area.
The human brain
The human brain holds the key to who we are, our thoughts, memories, and perception of the world around us. With some 100 billion brain-cells connected by several 100 thousand kilometers of wiring, the human brain is the most complex object in the known universe.
Disorders of the brain, including neurology and psychiatry, have a profound impact on daily life and society. Treatments are in development but there is a need for tools to more efficiently test new treatments in clinical trials. But, so far no cure exists for most disorders; therefore, the prognosis is that the societal burden of human brain disorders will increase.
To understand the human brain, we must measure the living human brain
The most versatile and powerful technique to measure the human brain is magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MRI is the only technique available to image brain anatomy, function, connectivity, and metabolism and does so without any harmful by-effect.
Research focus
The research of the Spinoza Centre is focused on:
- Methods (development of data acquisition and analyses techniques)
- Cognitive neuroscience (research into the brain’s information processing)
- Clinical science (research into clinical disorders)
The Spinoza Centre has been supported in part by a grant from the European Fund for Regional Development (EFRO) and by contributions by the Municipality of Amsterdam and the Province of North Holland.