The Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging is a core-facility, research institute and a unique research hub for cognitive, neuro and clinical sciences. The Centre is a joint initiative of the Amsterdam University Medical Centra – locations AMC and VUMC, University of Amsterdam, VU University, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. The Centre combines state-of-the-art technology with experts on methodological aspects and cognitive, neuro and clinical applications. The Centre houses a variety of techniques designed to visualize and study the brain, but also facilitates academic and industrial research programs in areas other than the brain. In particular, the Centre houses two magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners, operating at conventional (3T) and ultra-high field strengths (7T). The 7T MRI is one of four that are currently operational in the Netherlands and allows the human body and brain to be visualized at unprecedented detail.
The Spinoza Centre aims to provide deep and mechanistic insights into brain function in health and disease by focussing on the mesoscopic organisation scale that bridges the microscopic (cellular) and macroscopic (brain area) organisation scales of the human brain. The Centre has a unique focus on and bridging function between cognitive neuroscience, i.e. the neural mechanisms underlying human cognition and behaviour, and clinical neuroscience, i.e. the neural mechanisms underlying diseases and disorders of the human brain. Furthermore, the Centre strives to push the limits of non-invasive neuroimaging methods in living humans and leverages a unique combination of in vivo, post-mortem and translational neuroscience. Last, the Spinoza Centre will achieve this by offering an open-access research centre for ultra-high field MRI and a knowledge hub to the largest neuroscience and cognition community in the Netherlands.