Since the pioneering work of Hodgkin and Huxley in 1952 and a growing mathematical interest in nonlinear diffusion during the 1970's the way has been open for fruitful collaborations between experimentally oriented neuroscientists and applied mathematicians and physicists to better understand how systems of real neurons actually function. The multidisciplinary faculty team has biological expertise in several invertebrate and vertebrate neural preparations and mathematical expertise in modern nonlinear, with particular emphasis on statistical analysis and nonlinear diffusion processes. Two areas in which fruitful collaborations are well underway are in olfactory information processing and in hippocampal mechanisms of spatial learning.