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| Harvard Mind, Brain, and Behavior | |
|---|---|
| Name | Mind, Brain, and Behavior |
| Affiliation | Harvard University |
| Established | 1997 |
| Type | Interfaculty initiative |
| Location | Cambridge, Massachusetts |
Harvard Mind, Brain, and Behavior is an interfaculty initiative at Harvard University linking scholarship across Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard College, Harvard Medical School, and other Harvard entities to study cognition, neural systems, and behavior. It integrates approaches from laboratories associated with Massachusetts General Hospital, McLean Hospital, and collaborators at institutions such as MIT, Stanford University, Yale University, and Princeton University. The initiative fosters interdisciplinary training and research bridging investigators affiliated with departments like Psychology, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Computer Science, and clinical centers including Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Boston Children's Hospital.
Mind, Brain, and Behavior was formed in the late 20th century amid rising interest in interdisciplinary cognitive science and neuroscience, following trends set by programs at MIT, Yale University, Columbia University, and UC Berkeley. Early leadership included faculty who had connections with institutions such as Oxford University, Cambridge University, University College London, and the Max Planck Society. The initiative evolved through partnerships with research centers like McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, and national efforts exemplified by the BRAIN Initiative and the Human Connectome Project.
The mission unites scholarship across schools and centers to advance understanding of perception, cognition, emotion, and social behavior while training students affiliated with Harvard Medical School, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Business School, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Governance involves faculty committees drawn from departments including Psychology, Biology, Linguistics, Philosophy, and clinical departments tied to Massachusetts General Hospital and McLean Hospital. The administrative model resembles consortia such as Allen Institute for Brain Science and collaborates with funding agencies like the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and private funders such as the Simons Foundation and the McKnight Foundation.
Academic offerings span undergraduate concentrations, graduate fellowships, and postdoctoral training with coursework drawn from departments like Psychology, Neuroscience, Computer Science, Philosophy, and Linguistics. Seminars and labs interface with centers such as the Center for Brain Science and programs affiliated with Harvard Medical School clinical rotations at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital. Core curricular elements echo pedagogical models from MIT, Columbia University, Stanford University, and Princeton University that blend experimental methods, computational modeling, and translational science supported by resources analogous to the Human Connectome Project and the BRAIN Initiative.
Research clusters address perception, memory, decision-making, language, development, and psychiatric neuroscience through collaborations with entities such as the Center for Brain Science, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, FAS Center for Systems Biology, and clinical partners like McLean Hospital. Projects include neuroimaging consortia using platforms comparable to the Human Connectome Project and experimental programs aligned with the Allen Institute for Brain Science and the Simons Foundation autism initiatives. Cross-institutional collaborations extend to researchers at MIT, Boston University, Yale University, University of Pennsylvania, and international partners including University College London and Max Planck Society centers.
Faculty affiliated with the initiative have ties to influential scholars and institutions such as Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker, Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman, Eric Kandel, Antonio Damasio, Joseph LeDoux, Elizabeth Phelps, Nancy Kanwisher, Joshua Greene, David Hubel, Torsten Wiesel, Patricia Churchland, John Searle, Daniel Dennett, Martha Nussbaum, Steven Hyman, Brenda Milner, Stanley Prusiner, Thomas Südhof, Linda Buck, Roger Sperry, V.S. Ramachandran, Edmund Rolls, Karl Friston, W. E. Moerner, Jennifer Doudna, Emmanuelle Charpentier, Sebastian Seung, Christof Koch, Rita Levi-Montalcini, Bruno Bettelheim, Howard Gardner, Leonard Mlodinow, George Church, Michael Gazzaniga, Patricia Goldman-Rakic, Eric Lander, Margaret Livingstone, Seth Lloyd, Jeffrey Lieberman, Helen Thompson Woolley, Hermann von Helmholtz, Wilhelm Wundt, Gustav Fechner, Ivan Pavlov, B.F. Skinner, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, William James, John Dewey.
Students engage in laboratory rotations, independent research, and seminars with mentors drawn from affiliated departments and hospitals including Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, McLean Hospital, and institutes like the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology. Extracurricular activities mirror student organizations found at Yale University, Princeton University, Stanford University, and MIT, and include collaborative workshops, grant-writing training connected to agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
Outreach includes public lectures, symposia, and media collaborations with outlets and venues such as the Harvard Museum of Natural History, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and partnerships with nonprofits like the Dana Foundation and the Alzheimer's Association. Programs coordinate with national initiatives such as the BRAIN Initiative and public education efforts similar to those at the Allen Institute for Brain Science and the Sloan Foundation.