Centres in Geneva and Industrial Research

The Brain and Behaviour Laboratory (BBL)

The Brain and Behaviour Lab is made up of several research units that focus on medicine and psychology. Its role is to study behaviour, cognition and emotions, and the illnesses that affect them. The main questions addressed by the Lab deal with emotions, decision-making, the role of sleep and dreams in creativity, the consequences of neurological illness and sleep disorders and the influence of social situations and emotional states on brain function.

The lab uses state-of-the-art equipment that allows observation of the human brain with several techniques, including MRI, electroencephalography and psychoacoustics in sleep and virtual reality laboratories.

The Interfaculty Neuroscience Centre

The Interfaculty Neuroscience Centre comprises about 50 research teams. They research in in a variety of neuroscience areas of relevance to normal and pathological brain behaviour in both human beings (adults and children) and animals.

The major methods used in this research are neurogenetics, neurobiology, computational neuroscience, neuroimaging, cognitive neuroscience, developmental neuroscience and clinical neuroscience.

The BioAlps platform is another sign of the investment in life sciences in the Lake Leman region over the past decade.

In the 1990s, technology transfer offices were set up in the EPFL, Geneva and Lausanne. Their activities were then expanded through the creation of a common platform, BioAlps. The platform is used by all the French-speaking regions of Switzerland (the Suisse Romande) in collaboration with the Federal Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO). BioAlps' mission is to promote the image of the sector, particularly abroad, and to support its industrial partners.

Switzerland is one of the world's leading centres of pharmaceutical research. Businesses in this sector, along with multinational start-ups, are very active in the area of neuroscience and brain disorders.

They work for example on schizophrenia, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's or Alzheimer's diseases.