The goal of the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience at Yale University, endowed by the Kavli Foundation, is to elucidate nervous system development and function. Ultimately, we seek to understand how synaptic circuits form, embody knowledge of the outside world, and combine that knowledge with past experience and future goals to generate behavior.

The Kavli Institute focuses on developing and applying innovative approaches and state-of-the-art methodologies to the study of neural cells and systems that have the capability of increasing our understanding of the human brain and of its dysfunction in disease. A multidisciplinary research strategy, ranging from genetics and cell biology to behavior, is used to explore the development, maintenance, and operation of the circuits underlying diverse neural operations – from perception, to memory, decision, and action.