The National Institutes of Mental Health (Neurosciences Research Branch) and the Center for Complex Systems at Florida Atlantic University announce a nationwide training program in Complex Systems and the Brain Sciences for both pre- and post-doctoral fellows. The aim of this research and training program is to blend emerging concepts and models of complex systems with specific experimental model systems in the behavioral, cognitive and brain sciences. This aim is facilitated by our close collaboration with the on-site University MRI which allows our students and faculty to use cutting-edge brain imaging technologies including functional MRI and high-resolution structural MRI in conjunction with our existing EEG and MEG capabilities.

The human brain generates complex patterns of behavior on different scales of organization. The interdisciplinary and emerging field of nonlinear dynamics offers new strategies and paradigms for understanding complex systems such as the human brain and its relation to behavior. Slowly, but surely, the complex systems approach is bridging the gap between what one element does and what many of them do when they function cooperatively. The goal of neuroscience, since its early beginnings, has been to do the same for neurons and neuronal groups. Neuroscience must now be supplemented with new mathematical ideas, research strategies and computational tools, if the inherent complexity of the most complex system of all - the human brain and its relation to behavior - are to be understood. The aim of this federally funded training program is to create a new kind of `dynamical brain scientist.' She/he will be a theoretically oriented, mathematically sophisticated, computer-literate individual who will bring new ways of thinking into the experimental arena. The Training Program stresses the need for trainees to acquire research skills in specific experimental systems in the brain and behavioral sciences conjointly with developing theoretical concepts, tools and intuitions within a specially tailored graduate program and post-doctoral environment.