At the fundamental level it attempts to understand the behavior of individual neurons, their growth, signaling mechanisms between neurons, and how populations of neurons produce complex behavior. Such information has broad application to a better understanding of the communcation that occurs between the various parts of the nervous system and the brain. For example, such an understanding can be applied to the development of replacement parts for impaired neural systems, such as the auditory, visual and motor systems as well as achieving a better understanding of how normal and diseased systems work.

The Biomedical Engineering (Neural Engineering) programme is offered at Illinois Institute of Technology.