EBRAINS 2.0: 38 million to revolutionize digital neuroscience

EBRAINS (European Brain Research Infrastructures) is an EU co-funded collaborative research platform designed to advance neuroscience and brain health. Developed as an extension of the Human Brain Project, which ended at the end of 2023, and whose final summit was hosted by Marseille, EBRAINS is a digital ecosystem where researchers, clinicians and experts converge to explore the complexity of the brain at different scales and derive new solutions for brain medicine and technology.

Thanks to the funding won on January 1, 2024, EBRAINS will be able to continue maturing its infrastructure and increasingly support digital neuroscience. Over the next three years, the infrastructure will continue to develop tools and services for the benefit of neuroscience communities, brain medicine and brain activity-based technologies.

Involvement of Aix-Marseille Université

Viktor Jirsa, CNRS Research Director and director of the Institut de Neurosciences des Systèmes (AMU/Inserm) has been Chief Scientific Officer of EBRAINS since June 2022. During the Human Brain Project, Mr. Jirsa led the workpackage dedicated to the integration of data, models and tools, with a view to personalizing brain models. This work led to the birth of a new computer tool, the Virtual Epileptic Patient (VEP), which enables clinical researchers to localize the areas of a patient's brain where epileptic seizures occur. Fabrice Bartolomei, Head of the Clinical Neurophysiology Department at AP-HM, leads the large EPINOV clinical trial testing VEP in prospective patients.

Today, on behalf of Aix-Marseille Université, Mr. Jirsa is responsible for the European coordination of the " Virtual Brain Twin for personalized treatment of Psychiatric Disorders " (VBT) project, which is also receiving 10 million euros in funding from the European Commission as part of the Horizon Health Europe Calls 2023 initiative.

Psychiatry is set to become one of the biggest challenges in medicine between now and 2030. This project aims to create an ecosystem for generating virtual brain twins for psychiatric patients, spanning several EU countries and building on the expertise in neural microcircuit simulation, mathematical analysis, innovative AI tools, psychiatric care and clinical studies gained through the Human Brain Project. The Virtual Brain Twin platform relies on EBRAINS to leverage big data, multi-scale modeling and high-performance computing.

"In Virtual Brain Twin, we are taking a highly innovative approach by combining the latest digital twin technology with artificial intelligence tools to explain how drugs act on the brain, from molecule to cognition," says Jirsa. "The potential impact on psychiatry and society in general is immense.

In addition to the involvement of the Institut de Neurosciences des Systèmes, other Marseille neuroscience laboratories are also involved in the project, including the Institut des Neurosciences de la Timone and the Centre de Résonance Magnétique Biologique et Médicale. Proof that Aix-Marseille Université's neuroscience community is recognized and highly involved at the European level.