NIPS is an internationally recognized research institution and active international exchanges are performed. NIPS has the positions of foreign research staff, and world top-class researchers have engaged in research collaboration so far using this framework. Besides the research collaboration, visiting professors contribute to education of young researchers. In FY2014, NIPS started the Section of International Collaborative Research Project, which is run for 3 years by an adjunctive foreign professor as a Principal Investigator (P.I.). From FY2017 to FY2022, Professor Denis Le Bihan (a former Director of Neurospin, France) ran a lab for two terms as a P.I., and achieved distinguished research using 7T MRI.  From FY2023, Dr Andrew Moorhouse in University of New South Wales Sydney (Australia) is to serve as an adjunctive foreign professor and run a lab as a P.I., focusing on the brain function from the circuit level. Also, many foreign students enter Physiological Sciences Course of SOKENDAI as graduate students and engage in research actively.
One of the main international exchange activities at NIPS is the annual international symposium. A NIPS professor serves as an organizer, and leading researchers from abroad and Japan are invited. In FY2022, the 52th NIPS International Symposium entitled “Frontiers in Primate Systems Neuroscience” was held online (Organizer: Professor Masaki Isoda). In addition, the international workshop, which is an international version of NIPS research meetings, was launched in FY2008, and that entitled “Function and dysfunction of cortico-basal ganglia circuits” was held in FY2022 (Organizer: Professor Atsushi Nambu).
NIPS has an academic contract or a memorandum of understanding for academic interaction (MOU) with foreign institutions as follows, and is actively conducting joint academic activities including collaborative researches. The institutions are Korea University, College of Medicine and Yonsei University, College of Medicine and Dentistry (Korea); Tübingen University, Werner Reichardt Center for Integrative Neuroscience (Germany); Chulalongkorn University Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences (Thailand); University of New South Wales, Faculty of Medicine (Australia); Neurospin (France); and McGill University (Canada). In FY2022, a joint symposium with Tübingen University, Werner Reichardt Center for Integrative Neuroscience (Germany) and other institutions was held on site in Germany (Fig. 1). Also, a joint symposium with Korea University, College of Medicine and Yonsei University, College of Medicine and Dentistry was held on site at NIPS (Fig.2). In FY2023, it is planned to sign MOU with the whole Chulalongkorn University.
Besides these, many international research collaborations of high quality are performed at the individual researchers’ level, supported by the budget of NIPS as well as NINS and also research grant from outside.


Fig.1 
A joint symposium with Tübingen University, Werner Reichardt Center for Integrative Neuroscience
 

Fig. 2　
A joint symposium with Korea University and Yonsei University