Israeli neuroscientist professor Haim Sompolinsky. Photo: Courtesy of the Hebrew University.

JNS.org – Professor Haim Sompolinsky of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is the first Israeli to win the prestigious Gruber Neuroscience Prize, the university announced on Tuesday.

The $500,000 prize was awarded to Sompolinsky for his seminal contributions to the fields of computational and theoretical neuroscience.

“As datasets have grown ever larger and more complex, these fields have played an increasingly important role in helping scientists unravel the mysteries of how the brain functions in both health and disease,” the Hebrew University said in a statement.

Sompolinsky’s pioneering research provided a deep understanding of collective behavior and informational processing of large, complex neural circuits in the brain.

“He has also described how the combination of neuronal excitation and inhibition lead to chaotic yet controllable patterns of activity in the brain—findings that have profoundly influenced our understanding of brain systems,” said the university.