Our Vision

The Berkeley Center for the Study of Resilience (BCSR) brings together world-leading experts in neuroscience and computer science to address the current lack of effective treatments for neurological and psychiatric diseases by focusing on the brain’s inherent resilience mechanisms. By understanding why the brains of some individuals are more resilient to the damaging effects of trauma, disease, and aging than others, we hope to harness these mechanisms and translate them into much-needed new treatments. We address a significant blind spot in biomedical research. While traditional studies primarily focus on pathological processes that drive disease following trauma or during aging, we shift our attention to the proactive mechanisms active in the brains of individuals who age successfully or recover effectively from trauma.