​The Zelman Center for Brain Science Research of the School of Brain Sciences and Cognition is the research arm of the school whose goal is to promote research in Brain Sciences and Cognition in a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary way.  The center combines basic science aimed at understanding the cognitive aspects of behavior alongside the neural mechanisms and information processing that facilitate them. The center also promotes applied and applicative research on a variety of topics, from the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases to smart robotics and artificial intelligence. The importance of the combination of basic and applied research is based on the understanding that many breakthroughs, in particular those dealing with the treatment of neurological disorders and building smart machines, were born from breakthroughs in the basic understanding of how the brain works. This interdisciplinary research deploys a large number of scientific approaches and interdisciplinary researchers from all over Ben Gurion University of the Negev.

The center consists of over 60 researchers and about a similar number of research laboratories in the various fields of brain and cognition. As expected in an interdisciplinary center, the laboratories are spread across a wide range of departments ranging from life sciences and medicine, engineering sciences, mathematics, computer science to psychology and philosophy.

The center was established with the generous assistance of Prof. Vladimir Zelman, from the University of Southern California.