Human Brain Project

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Published March 23, 2023 | Version Version 4.0
Working paper Open

The coming decade of digital brain research - A vision for neuroscience at the intersection of technology and computing

Creators

  • 1. Institute of Neurosciences and Medicine (INM-1), Research Centre Jülich, Germany; C. & O. Vogt Institute for Brain Research, University Hospital Düsseldorf, Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany
  • 2. Institute of Neurosciences and Medicine (INM-1), Research Centre Jülich, Germany; Department of Physics, Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany
  • 3. The Danish Board of Technology Foundation, Copenhagen, Denmark
  • 4. Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, University of Oslo, Norway
  • 5. RWTH Aachen University
  • 6. Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone, UMR 7289, Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, France
  • 7. University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
  • 8. Institute of Anatomy I, Medical Faculty, University Hospital Düsseldorf, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany; Institute of Neurosciences and Medicine (INM-1), Research Centre Jülich, Germany
  • 9. Auburn University, USA
  • 10. Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1), Research Center Juelich, Germany; Department of Biomedicine, University of Basel, Switzerland; Institute of Medical Genetics and Pathology, University Hospital Basel, Switzerland
  • 11. Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands
  • 12. Institut Pasteur CNRS UMR 3571 Department of Neuroscience and Collège de France, Paris, France
  • 13. European Laboratory for Non-Linear Spectroscopy; Department of Biology, University of Florence, Italy
  • 14. Neurological Institute Foundation Casimiro Mondino (IRCCS), University of Pavia, Italy
  • 15. Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Sezione di Roma, Rome, Italy
  • 16. ICREA, Barcelona, Spain, University Pompeu Fabra
  • 17. Laboratorio Cajal de Circuitos Corticales, Centro de Tecnología Biomédica, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain; Instituto Cajal, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Spain
  • 18. Paris-Saclay University, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France;
  • 19. Institute of Neurosciences and Medicine (INM-1), Research Centre Jülich, Germany; Institute of Computer Science, University Hospital Düsseldorf, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany
  • 20. Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6) and Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6) and JARA Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships (JBI-1 /INM-10), Jülich Research Centre, Jülich, Germany; Department of Physics, Faculty 1, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
  • 21. Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium
  • 22. Institute of Cognitive Neurology and Dementia Research, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg,Magdeburg, Germany; German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), Magdeburg,Magdeburg, Germany; Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK
  • 23. Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Brain and Behaviour (INM-7), Research Centre Jülich, Germany; Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Medical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany
  • 24. Norwegian University of Life Sciences&University of Oslo
  • 25. De Montfort University, UK
  • 26. Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany,
  • 27. Montreal Neurological Institute, Canada; McGill University, Canada
  • 28. Centre for Research Ethics and Bioethics, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
  • 29. Aix-Marseille Univ, Inserm, INS, Institut de Neurosciences des Systèmes, France
  • 30. Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
  • 31. University College London, UK
  • 32. Department of Computer Science, The University of Manchester, United Kingdom
  • 33. Université de Liège, Belgium; KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium; VPH Institute, Leuven, Belgium
  • 34. Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, The Netherlands
  • 35. Biopsychology, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
  • 36. C. & O. Vogt Institute for Brain Research, University Hospital Düsseldorf, Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany
  • 37. Neurophy lab, ULB Neuroscience Institue, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)
  • 38. Computational Science and Technology, School of Computer Science and Communication, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden; Karolinska Institutet, Sweden
  • 39. Child Mind Institute, New York
  • 40. Croatian Institute for Brain Research, School of Medicine, University of Zagreb, Croatia
  • 41. Institute of Computational Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany; Health Sciences Department, Boston University, USA
  • 42. Helmholtz Zentrum München Institut für Entwicklungsgenetik, Germany;
  • 43. Athena Research & Innovation Center, Greece; University of Athens, Greece
  • 44. Aix Marseille Université, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, Institut de Neurosciences des Systèmes (INS) UMR1106, France
  • 45. University Health Network, Canada
  • 46. Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS), Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC), Research Centre Jülich, Germany
  • 47. Institute of Neurosciences and Medicine (INM-1), Research Centre Jülich, Germany
  • 48. Department of Informatics, Technical University Munich, Munich, Germany
  • 49. Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany
  • 50. Tampere University, Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology, FI-33720 Tampere, Finland
  • 51. 1. Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-7: Brain and Behaviour), Research Center Jülich, Jülich Germany; 2. Otto Hahn Cognitive Neurogenetics Group, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany; 3. Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Medical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
  • 52. Université de Liège, Belgium
  • 53. Neuroscience Institute - National Research Council, Italy; European Laboratory for Non-Linear Spectroscopy, Florence, Italy
  • 54. University of Ghent, Belgium
  • 55. Swammerdam Institute for life Sciences, University of Amsterdam
  • 56. Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health, Heidelberg University, Germany
  • 57. nstitute of Biophysics, National Research Council, Palermo, Italy
  • 58. Department of Informatics, Technical University Munich, Germany
  • 59. University of Glasgow, United Kingdom
  • 60. University of Brussels, Belgium
  • 61. FernUniversität in Hagen Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Germany; Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS), Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC), Research Centre Jülich, Germany
  • 62. Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, CEA, DSV/I2BM, INSERM, Universite Paris-Sud, Universite Paris-Saclay, Neurospin Center, France
  • 63. Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Rome, Italy
  • 64. Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience Group, Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  • 65. Hasselt University, Belgium; Biomedical Research Institute & Data Science Institute
  • 66. Bernoulli Institute for Mathematics, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
  • 67. Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg / Heidelberg University, Germany; University of Bern, Switzerland
  • 68. Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies – National Research Council, Italy
  • 69. Department of Integrative Neurophysiology, VU University, De Boelelaan 1085, 1081 HV, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Department of Psychiatry, Academic Medical Center, Postbus 22660, 1100 DD, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • 70. Université de Mons, Belgium
  • 71. Berlin Institute of Health at Charité, Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany; Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Department of Neurology with Experimental Neurology, Germany; Bernstein Focus State Dependencies of Learning & Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin, Germany
  • 72. Boston University School of Medicine, USA
  • 73. Bernstein Center Freiburg & Faculty of Biology, University of Freiburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
  • 74. ProModell Group, Chair for Digital Health, Department of Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany
  • 75. Department of Clinical Neurosciences, CHUV, Switzerland;
  • 76. Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics, Uppsala University, Sweden
  • 77. ICREA and Systems Neuroscience, Institute of Biomedical Investigations August Pi i Sunyer, Spain
  • 78. Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg / Heidelberg University, Germany;
  • 79. Bath Spa University; UKRI Centre for Accessible, Responsible & Transparent Artificial Intelligence (ART:AI), University of Bath; Allen Institute for Brain Sciences
  • 80. Inria Saclay - Ile de France, Neurospin - Service Neurospin, France
  • 81. University of Toronto; University Health Network
  • 82. University of Helsinki, Finland
  • 83. Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6) and Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6) and JARA Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships (JBI-1/INM-10), Jülich Research Centre, Jülich, Germany; Institute of Zoology, University of Cologne, Germany
  • 84. Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, USA; Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA; Laboratory for Neuro- and Psychophysiology, KU Leuven, Belgium
  • 85. University of Antwerp, Belgium
  • 86. Ernst Strüngmann Institute (ESI) for Neuroscience in Cooperation with Max Planck Society, 60528 Frankfurt, Germany; Inserm, Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute U1208, Univ. Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Bron, France
  • 87. Technical University of Munich, Chair of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Real-time Systems, Germany
  • 88. Center of Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, Rutgers University, Newark, USA

Description

Brain research has in recent years indisputably entered a new epoch, driven by substantial methodological advances and digitally enabled data integration and modeling at multiple scales – from molecules to the whole system. Major advances are emerging at the intersection of neuroscience with technology and computing. This new science of the brain integrates high-quality basic research, systematic data integration across multiple scales, a new culture of large-scale collaboration and translation into applications. A systematic approach, as pioneered in Europe’s Human Brain Project (HBP), will be essential in meeting the pressing medical and technological challenges of the coming decade. The aims of this paper are

  • To develop a concept for the coming decade of digital brain research
  • To discuss it with the research community at large, with the aim of identifying points of convergence and common goals
  • To provide a scientific framework for current and future development of EBRAINS
  • To inform and engage stakeholders, funding organizations and research institutions regarding future digital brain research
  • To identify and address key ethical and societal issues

While we do not claim that there is a ‘one size fits all’ approach to addressing these aspects, we are convinced that discussions around the theme of digital brain research will help drive progress in the broader field of neuroscience.

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Comments on this manuscript are welcome

This manuscript is a living document that is being further developed in a participatory process. The work has been initiated by the Science and Infrastructure Board of the Human Brain Project (HBP). Now, the entire research community is invited to contribute to shaping the vision by submitting comments. Comments can be submitted via an online commentary form here.

All submitted comments will be considered and discussed. The final decision on whether edits or additions will be made to the next version of the manuscript based on an individual comment will be made by the Science and Infrastructure Board (SIB) of the Human Brain Project (HBP) at regular intervals.

The final version of the manuscript will be prepared and published in the next months. Comments may be submitted until the end of May, 2023. Every researcher is welcome to provide comment or indicate support for the contents of this paper and jointly shape the future of brain research.

Supporters of the paper: Pietro Avanzini, Marc Beyer, Maria Del Vecchio, Jitka Annen, Maurizio Mattia, Steven Laureys, Rosanne Edelenbosch, Rafael Yuste, Jean-Pierre Changeux, Linda Richards, Hye Weon Jessica Kim, Chrysoula Samara, Luis Miguel González de la Garza, Nikoleta Petalidou, Vasudha Kulkarni, Cesar David Rincon, Isabella O'Shea, Munira Tamim Electricwala, Nicola Palomero-Gallagher, Bernd Carsten Stahl, Bahar Hazal Yalcinkaya, Meysam Hashemi, Carola Sales Carbonell, Marcel Carrère, Anthony Randal McIntosh, Hiba Sheheitli, Abolfazl Ziaeemehr, Martin Breyton, Giovanna Ramos Queda, Anirudh NIhalani Vattikonda, Gyorgy Buzsaki George Ogoh, William Knight Torbjørn V Ness, MIchiel van der Vlag, Mu-ming Poo.

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The coming decade of digital brain research V3.pdf

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Additional details

Funding

HBP SGA3 – Human Brain Project Specific Grant Agreement 3 945539
European Commission