EBRAINS Crowdsources the Future of European Neuroscience | The ScientistSkip to main content

Register

News<br>EBRAINS Crowdsources the Future of European Neuroscience<br>Leaders at EBRAINS, a collection of tools and data resources for basic neuroscience research, are finalizing the platform&rsquo;s 10-year plan amid calls to improve its usability.<br>Written byRJ MackenzieRJ MackenzieGo to The Scientist's LinkedIn Page

RJ is a freelance science writer based in Glasgow. He covers biological and biomedical science, with a focus on the complexities and curiosities of the brain and emerging AI technologies. RJ has a Master’s degree in Clinical Neurosciences from the University of Cambridge.<br>View Full Profile<br>Learn about our Editorial Policies.

| 4 min read

Save for Later

EBRAINS aims to empower both basic and translational neuroscience advances.<br>Image credit:&copy; iStock.com, master1305

PDF versionRegister for free to listen to this article<br>Listen with Speechify<br>0:00

4:00

Share

In a first-of-its-kind initiative, neuroscientists from around the world came together last month to decide the future of Europe’s neuroscience research. The team at EBRAINS—Europe’s flagship neuroscience infrastructure that was launched in 2019 and comprises tools and data resources for basic neuroscience research—hosted a symposium to map out the infrastructure’s next decade.<br>Before the meeting, EBRAINS’s leaders invited the global neuroscience community to submit proposals for the projects that the infrastructure should prioritize. During two days of debate, the EBRAINS team considered 139 proposals organized into five strategic themes. Discussions touched on how to make the infrastructure financially sustainable, how to better integrate its broad toolkits, and how to maximize its benefit to society. The crowdsourced approach was “something that has never been attempted before” within neuroscience, said Viktor Jirsa, EBRAINS’s chief scientific officer. EBRAINS’s decentralized approach contrasts with the top-down model of its predecessor, the Human Brain Project (HBP). The 10-year HBP launched in 2013 with the goal of simulating a complete human brain, but it did not deliver on that promise despite its €600 million budget.<br>EBRAINS, unlike the HBP, hasn’t set a single, overarching goal. Until now, the project has prioritized making resources available for the wider neuroscience community. These efforts make neuroscience easier to do, but the benefits are less obvious to funders, said Jirsa.<br>Continue reading below...<br>Like this story? Sign up for FREE Newsletter updates:<br>Latest science news storiesTopic-tailored resources and eventsCustomized newsletter content<br>Subscribe

The symposium is an opportunity to appeal to funders by showcasing the translational science that EBRAINS can power, he added. But EBRAINS users and data scientists said that the platform should prioritize open science principles and usability upgrades to maximize the infrastructure’s benefit to neuroscientists.<br>EBRAINS: From HBP Resource to Ambitious Research Platform<br>EBRAINS began as a resource for accessing HBP-generated data. The latest phase of the infrastructure, which began after the HBP ended in 2023, was designed to consolidate and future-proof the project, said EBRAINS co-chief executive officer Katrin Amunts, the former HBP’s scientific research director. “Every infrastructure needs to be a living infrastructure,” she said.<br>EBRAINS’s budget is far smaller than the HBP’s. Amunts said that in June, the EBRAINS project leaders will apply for €32 million from the European Commission. While the HBP received funding for a decade, the European Commission is currently only offering calls for funding until 2029, said Jirsa.<br>“It is clear that this cannot cover everything,” said Amunts. The project will also seek funding from national pots across Europe and from global funding schemes. Amunts mentioned potential collaborations with similar programs in the US, Japan, and China.<br>Even with its smaller budget, EBRAINS is still ambitious. It is structured into eight “work packages,” covering everything from brain atlases to multi-scale medical datasets, digital twins, a metadata framework called openMINDS, high-performance and neuromorphic computing, community building, platform management, and administration. The goal of these work packages is to get data and toolkits into the hands of neuroscientists around the world.<br>A Home for Tools to Interrogate the Brain<br>EBRAINS’s web portal gives users access to a glut of datasets, including atlases of the human, macaque, marmoset, mouse, and rat brains. Neuroscientists can interrogate these atlases and analyze them using the platform’s built-in tool suites.<br>This integration of atlas and analysis has been a significant boon for Ingvilde Bjerke, a postdoctoral scholar in neuroscience and experimental therapeutics at Pennsylvania State University. Bjerke transforms adult brain atlases to match developmental profiles. “When I make...