For the past fifty five years, the Brain Research Institute at UCLA has been one of the top centers for neurological research in the world. Established on the UCLA campus in 1959, the Brain Research Institute (BRI) was founded to advance research in structure and function of the nervous system. As well as research, the BRI also brings together many different educational disciplines to increase knowledge in a broad range of topics, as well as giving students valuable research experience.


The two major goals of the BRI are:

  1. To broaden the education of undergraduate, graduate students, and post-doctorate fellows in the fields of medicine, basic medical sciences, and the life sciences.
  2. To encourage and develop the correlation and dissemination of information concerning the brain.

 


The Brain Research Institute was founded in 1959 by Dr. Horace W. Magoun and Dr. Donald B. Lindsley. The BRI, however, had been originally established in 1957after strong encouragement from then superintendent Edward Edwards and Neurosurgery Chief Dr. John D. French to expand research operations at UCLA. At this point, the BRI contained 17,000 square feet of research space for most of the department members and the many post-doctorate fellows that Magoun was able to attract. It wasn’t until 1959 that the University of California granted Institute status to the BRI. The first director of the BRI was Dr. French, who was director from its founding in 1961 until 1976. During his seventeen year tenure as director, Dr. French led the BRI to become one of the top research institutes in the world.

 

 


One of the largest and most important aspects of the Brain Research Institute was that it brought together many different departments and scientific disciplines in its quest to decipher the mysteries of the brain. Researchers of all scientific disciplines from anatomy and neuroscience to pharmacology came together to test medicinal effects on the brain, or how different chemical and electrical signals determine actions inside the body. This extremely diverse atmosphere allowed the BRI to split up into different interdisciplinary programs. One of the most important of these programs was the Space Biology Laboratory. Inspired and directed by Dr. W. Ross Adey, the Space Biology Laboratory (SBL) studied the effects of space and space travel on the brain, to determine whether prolonged space flight would be possible for the human body. Because many of these tests were done using animals, mostly chimpanzees, as subjects, the procurement and care of animals was a major concern for the BRI researchers. Not only the SBL, but the majority of research was conducted on animals to learn how the environment affects the brain and how the brain works to control behavior. The chimpanzees used in the SBL were housed inside UCLA’s Slichter Hall for a number of years The researchers viewed the animals as models for humans, and they hoped that the animal tests would lead to eventual applications for humans. Because of the importance of these animals and there welfare prior to experiments, a significant amount of resources were used simply for the maintenance of special facilities to sustain an environment conducive to healthy behavior in the animal subjects.

 


The Brain Research Institute, as its name suggests, was founded for the purpose of research. Early on, the BRI took a leading role in employing computers to further biological research. In addition, the BRI also amplified the role of computers and communications engineering in medical and brain research. The BRI made huge research advances in the 1960s.

 

In 1969 alone, the following advances were made in research.

  1. The study and treatment of patients with temporal epilepsy. Information about the condition itself and how it affects the brain was obtained through research.
  2. A study of brain function was conducted on astro-monkeys orbiting the earth for thirty days. Research was done to determine the effects of weightlessness and other space factors on humans in prolonged space flights.
  3. A study of how the brain induces sleep and wakefulness. Included in this study was what happens in the brain when anesthetics are given.
  4. A study of patients brain patterns employing the use of telemetry. In this study, patients are monitored by sensory devices and a small telemetry unit while they go about their daily lives. The telemetry unit transmits information on brain patterns to the telephone, which relays the information to computers and paper records at the UCLA Medical Center.


This last study was done not only to study the brain, but to test the use of the telemetry units for possible use for all people. The hope was that the units would help alleviate hospital overcrowding by allowing patients to be monitored at home, and then treated by neighborhood monitoring centers. In addition to all of these achievements, the Brain Research Institute had also taken a leading role in identifying and equating specific electrical and chemical brain functions with actual behavior in individual creatures. This means that researchers were finally able to map out what areas of the brain controlled various body functions and what different chemical hormones were responsible for internal body changes.


Besides the massive research undertakings going on, the Brain Research Institute placed a huge emphasis on education and stressed training students for careers in various research fields. The students had a curriculum which combined an interdisciplinary science education and departmental and interdisciplinary experience that characterized the research goals of the BRI. In 1968, one hundred thirty-three graduate students received their degrees from the BRI.


As our knowledge of the human brain has increased, and especially as computer technology has increased, the types of studies that the Brain Research Institute has been able to accomplish have become much more complex and tell us more about the brain than could ever have been imagined in the 1960s. Dr. Chris Evans, the current director of the BRI who has been in charge since 2004, has helped take the BRI into new frontiers in brain research and technology development.

Today, the BRI and UCLA’s neuroscience program conduct studies that focus mainly on:

 

Bibliography