HBP Summit Showcases Successes of Year One
© A human brain model overlaid with a stylized network of neurons. © BBP/EPFL 2014
Heidelberg. The second annual summit of the Human Brain Project (HBP) begins today at the University of Heidelberg. Nearly 400 participants from a dozen countries will present their key results and discuss the future challenges facing global collaborative brain research. Having expanded to 112 Partners in 24 countries in its first year, the HBP is well-placed to set new the frontiers of neuroscience, medicine, and computing.
Some Scientific Highlights
• Brain Simulation: The HBP has applied brain simulation techniques originally developed for the neocortex to a new brain region—the cerebellum.
• Neurorobotics: The HBP has developed a prototype virtual room to link up brain models
with virtual “bodies” and study emergent cognition and behaviour.
• High Performance Computing: Pre-commercial procurement of research and development on “interactive supercomputers” has been successfully launched. Interactivity will be the key feature of future supercomputers for brain research.
• Future Computing: Brain-inspired neuromorphic chips to rival today’s high-performance computers are now being tested by HBP researchers for their versatility in solving modern day computing challenges.
• Brain Disease: A new strategy for categorising and classifying large volume of patient data has been developed, a first step towards personalised medicine.
• Mouse Brain Data: Key missing data on the cellular organisation of the mouse brain has
been generated and the technique to determine all genes switched on and off in single neurons has been established, a first step towards isolating all the genetic types of cells in the brain.
• Human Brain Data: The highest resolution 3D cellular data on the human brain has been produced (BigBrain). It will serve as a reference for the HBP Human Brain Atlas.
• Theoretical Neuroscience: The European Institute for Theoretical Neuroscience (EITN)’s inauguration in September kicked off workshops on topics linking different aspects of HBP.
These are just some of the results that will be presented over the Summit’s three days. Stories and images for the above highlights as well as a comprehensive list of HBP achievements are available to registered press at the links below.
About the Human Brain Project
The Human Brain Project is a European Commission Future and Emerging Technologies Flagship (FET) that aims to achieve a multi-level, integrated understanding of brain structure and function through the development and use of information and communication technologies (ICT). These technologies will enable large-scale collaboration and data sharing, reconstruction of the brain at different biological scales, federated analysis of clinical data to map diseases of the brain and the development of brain-inspired computing systems. Through the HBP’s ICT Platforms, scientists, clinicians and engineers will be able to perform diverse experiments and share knowledge with a common goal of unlocking the complex structure of the brain. With an unprecedented crossdisciplinary scope, the Human Brain Project seeks to integrate neuroscience, medicine and computing, unify brain research and benefit the global scientific community. The development and use of ICT over the HBP’s 10-year lifetime are to pave the way for the project’s ultimate goal – a simulation on the scale of the human brain.
Key Dates
July 2010: The European Commission published a call for proposals. Six pilot projects were selected.
January 2013: Vice-President Neelie Kroes announced two winning projects, evaluated by 25 world-renowned experts. The Human Brain Project was one of them.
Phase I – The Ramp-Up Phase
October 2013: Official launch of the Human Brain Project in Switzerland. The HBP Consortium consisted of 80 organizations in 22 different countries including universities, research organizations and industry partners.
March 2014: 32 new partners were included through a competitive call for proposals. The HBP Consortium expanded to 112 organizations in 24 different countries, mostly in Europe, but also Canada, China, Israel, Japan and the United States.
March 31, 2016: End of the Ramp-Up Phase
Phase II – The Operational Phase begins
April 1, 2016: Horizon 2020 funding begins