Home | Neuroscience Institute

Our vision

Our vision is of an Africa where people achieve their full potential through brain health.

By addressing existing knowledge gaps and strengthening African research networks, we seek solutions to African challenges and work to ensure that African priorities are represented in global neuroscience.

Training and capacity development

We strive to build research capacity nationally and internationally, and grow the next generation of neuroscience researchers on both the clinical and basic neuroscience career tracks.

Master of Neuroscience Applications for 2026 now CLOSED!!

We look forward to welcoming students from diverse academic disciplines for this new Master's course, which prioritizes interdisciplinarity!

Advocacy and engagement

We follow a socially-responsive approach, using advocacy, engagement and outreach to extend our impact to and beyond the scientific community, to industry, government and society more broadly.

SA’s first female adult epileptologist Dr Aayesha Soni is transforming lives

NI member, Dr Aayesha J Soni, really is on a 'transforming lives' streak! As evident in this recent article by the Post.

Specialists scrub up for free in life-changing epilepsy surgery drive at Groote Schuur

Lovely article in the Daily Maverick about the epilepsy surgery team, led by NI member Dr Aayesha Soni, providing life-changing surgeries at Groote Schuur Hospital, pro bono aimed at preventing future seizures in patients.

Cultivating compassion in healthcare

The first in the NI's Hot Topics in Neuroscience line up at this year's UCT Summer School featured Dr Heidi Matisonn of the EthicsLab talking about the difference between compassion and empathy.

Art, Imagination, and Science: Reflections on Ralph Borland’s Residency at the EthicsLab and Neuroscience Institute

Artist Ralph Borland's residency at UCT Neuroscience Institute used art as ethical inquiry in clinical spaces, proposing a dichroic light installation for the atrium and a model for ongoing artist-scientist collaboration.

Interacting Cortico–Basal Ganglia–Thalamocortical Loops in Behavioral Control

You are warmly invited to a Shocklab Invited Special talk by Prof. Fred Hamker (TU Chemnitz, Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin). Title: Interacting Cortico–Basal Ganglia–Thalamocortical Loops in Behavioral Control

10 March 2026 Read more

Xhosa Classes for all levels

learning to speak Xhosa in community.

12 March 2024 - 4 March 2027 Read more

Whose Data, Whose Story? Reclaiming Nuance in Personalised Medicine Beyond AI Models

Erin Kinghorn explores science communication as a site of ethical responsibility, asking how we can speak about AI in ways that are honest about limits, attentive to context, and accountable to the communities involved.

12 March 2026 Read more

The Basics of the Commandline and High Performance Systems workshop

A 1-hour online workshop run every 2nd friday (9-10am) that will be useful for those using Neuroimaging software such as FreeSurfer and AFNI.

15 March 2024 - 26 February 2027 Read more