Neurobiology and Changing Ecosystems

Neural systems evolved over hundreds of millions of years to allow organisms to sense and respond to their environments – to be receptive and responsive, yet flexible. Recent rapid, human-generated environmental changes are testing the limits of the adaptive capacity of neural systems. This presents an opportunity and a need for interdisciplinary and transformative research to understand responses induced by pollution, habitat depletion, climate change, and other environmental perturbations.

The Kavli Foundation's Neurobiology and Changing Ecosystems program supports research investigating how neural processes – including molecular, cellular, and circuit-level mechanisms – are impacted by or resilient to changing environments. We believe this emerging scientific area is of great societal and scientific importance and will provide a unique opportunity to re-examine our understanding of neural adaptation and the mechanisms underlying neural resilience.