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The University of Iowa has a long history as a center for brain research and patient care. Our first psychological laboratory opened in 1890, and the Iowa Psychopathic Hospital opened in 1921 as the first university-affiliated psychiatric department west of the Mississippi. Some of the leading figures in neurology, psychiatry, psychology lived and worked here including Carl Seashore, Kenneth Spence, Adolph Sahs, and George Winokur.
In the 1980s, Hanna and Antonio Damasio conducted their groundbreaking brain lesion studies here and Nancy Andreasen identified schizophrenia as a disease of the brain. Our Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Neuroscience was founded in 1984.
All of this formed the solid foundation for the Iowa Neuroscience Institute, founded in 2017 with a transformational $45 million grant to the UI from the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust. The INI has grown rapidly as a team of motivated scientists who are committed to advancing knowledge using innovative and rigorous methods to investigate a range of understudied areas and clinical applications.
The community we have built here is unmatched in its commitment to advancing science through collaboration. Our Research Programs of Excellence demonstrate the power of bringing together faculty from across our campus to focus energies on some of the most vexing questions in brain science. Our trainees from undergraduate through graduate and postdoc are learning that the path to discovery is not a solo journey. And our outreach efforts invite the public to be a part of this ongoing quest for knowledge and understanding.
Psychiatric and neurological disorders are devastating to individuals, their families, and society. These disorders account for nearly one-fifth of all disability leading to ill health or early death worldwide, more than any single category of disease. The Iowa Neuroscience Institute is committed to seeking revolutionary discoveries in fundamental neuroscience to translate an understanding of how the brain works into clinical treatments for disorders of the brain and nervous system.