On September 27, 1934 Sir Edward Beatty, chancellor of McGill University, declared the institute formally opened.

Guy Rouleau, the current Director of The Neuro, was awarded the Canada Gairdner Wightman award in 2020, for identifying and elucidating the genetic architecture of neurological and psychiatric diseases, including ALS, autism and schizophrenia, and his leadership in the field of Open Science.

[8] The McConnell Brain Imaging Center (BIC) is The Neuro's multimodal platform for neuroimaging and neuroinformatics research.

Launched in 1984 by then MNI director Dr. William Feindel with the support of the McConnell Family Foundation, the BIC has grown into the largest neuroimaging facility in Canada.

Researcher at the BIC have access to a 3.0 Tesla (3T) MRI scanner (Siemens), the first full-body 7.0 Tesla (7T) MRI scanner (Siemens) in Canada, a 275-channel CTF MEG system, electroencephalography (EEG), and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), among others.