The first steps for the foundation of Neurosciences Research Center (NSRC) of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences were taken by organization of a multidisciplinary research team in 2003 at lmam Khomeini Hospital. Overtime, with increment of research projects, the team decided to establish a research center. After, selection of founding board, and preliminary approval of Medical Sciences Universities Expansion Council, NSRC was finally established in 2006. Later in 2007, with the formation of NSRC`s research and policy councils, and also selection of Dr.Mehdi Farhoudi as director of the research center, the principle consent was issued from Ministry of Health and Medical Education (MOHME).
Eventually, with increased cooperation of NSRC with other national/international research centers, admission of PhD students, and setting up of its well-equipped laboratories, NSRC achieved to get the definite consent of MOHME in 2009. Currently, NSRC has numerous projects in cooperation with a wide range of local state and private universities, in various industrial, computational, basic sciences, clinical, diagnostic, and rehabilitation fields.
NSRC has also accomplished the mission of expanding and deepening its international relations through working on some joint projects with the universities in Denmark, United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, which has led to publication of joint articles and designing research projects for PhD students. NSRC is now working on conducting pre-clinical and clinical studies, and has succeeded to answer the ever-increasing demands of researchers by establishing specialized laboratories in thefields of motor and cognitive behavior, molecular neurobiology, surgery of laboratory animals, histopathology, electrophysiology, and cognitive evaluation and rehabilitation. It has also paid special attention on conducting field studies and library researches, including disease registries or narrative and systematic reviews in recent years. Furthermore, in the last few years, by taking “aim-target” policies, the conducted researches of this center are mainly focused on brain vascular, and neurodegenerative diseases. For this reason, the modeling of Brain aging, Ischemia, Stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and other cognitive diseases are developed in this research center. In the field of education, NSRC hosts successful PhD and Post-Doc courses since 2010, and according to the quantitative and qualitative development of research projects in NSRC, this center is now working with junior and senior researchers in different grades, including MD, Parm.D., D.M.D., MSc, Medical Residency, PhD, and Post-Doc; and hopes to improve this potential by expanding its physical space as soon as possible. It is also worth noting that one of the major achievements of this center is publish of “Journal of Experimental and Clinical Neurosciences” since 2014. This journal accepts original and review articles from local and international researchers.
Finally, despite all the existing restrictions, NSRC of TUOMS is one of the pioneering neurosciences research centers in Iran, according to annual evaluations; and hopes to maintain this position in the future as well.