WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 (Xinhuanet) -- The world's largest neuroscience research center, the McGovern Institute for Brain Research (MIBR), formally opened Friday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), reports reaching here said.

The center is founded with an aim of exploring human learning and communication through interdisciplinary research, it was reported.

"I am hopeful that the scientific research done at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research can make significant contributions to advancing human learning and communication within the next 20 years," said Patrick McGovern Jr., founder and chairman of the International Data Group.

In 2000, he and his wife, entrepreneur Lore Harp McGovern, pledged 350 million US dollars over 20 years for the creation of the new institute and its operation.

The research at the new institute will combine and extend the results of recent breakthroughs in three major, interrelated areas: systems and computational neuroscience, imaging and cognitive neuroscience, and genetic and cellular neuroscience.

The 140,000 square feet (13,006.42 square meter) institute houses the world's largest collection of magnetic systems to study the brain. One system is operational and the two others are planned.

The research center is led by Prof. Robert Desimone, former director of The National Institutes for Mental Health's Intramural Research Program, the largest mental health research center in the world. He is also a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts of Sciences.

The faculty of the institute includes two Nobel laureates and one National Medal of Science winner. As put by Desimone, it boasts "the talent and teamwork of 16 world-class scientists. This is scientific collaboration at the highest level."

Desimone said the institute has "a mandate to lead the world into a new era of systems neuroscience, the study of brain systems and behavior." Enditem