Profile Information

The Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging gives neuroscientists access to ultra-sensitive MRI scanners for basic research into brain function and brain disorders. The Spinoza Centre encourages collaboration in the Amsterdam region and offers a national infrastructure where possible.

Areas of research

The Spinoza Centre concentrates on the following research into healthy and diseased brain function:

• Cognition (research into the function of processes such as attention, memory, planning and decision-making)
• Emotion (research into the neural basis of interactions between emotion and behaviour)
• Clinical neuroscience (research into the causes of psychiatric disorders)
• Methods and statistics (development of methods for data acquisition and statistical analysis)

Brain imaging

The Spinoza Centre has two 3 Tesla scanners (one on Roeterseiland Campus) and one 7 Tesla MRI scanner. These can produce very high-resolution images of brain function, structure and metabolism. The Spinoza Centre also has laboratories for complementary techniques (EEG, TMS, tDCS) and for behavioural experiments.

About the Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging

The Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging is a joint initiative between the Academy’s Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, the University of Amsterdam, VU University Amsterdam, VU Medical Center, and the Academic Medical Center (AMC) in Amsterdam. It brings together neuroscientists in the Amsterdam region. It is located on the grounds of the AMC and is supported by a grant from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and by funds contributed by the City of Amsterdam and the Province of Noord-Holland. The Spinoza Centre encourages collaboration in the Amsterdam region and offers a national infrastructure where possible. It cooperates with the university medical centres in Leiden and Utrecht, which also conduct medical research using a 7T MRI scanner, and with Philips.