From 14 to 16 March 2023, the EBRAINS Workshop: Anatomy & function of the prefrontal cortex across species took place in Paris, France. The event was organised by the HBP Education Programme and EITN Paris, in collaboration with CEA Saclay, ICM, Cajal Institute & UPM. 

The first two days of the event took place at the Institute for Brain & Spinal Cord (ICM), located in Central Paris, and consisted of four interesting plenary sessions filled with inspiring talks and engaging discussions. The third day took place at the Institut des Neurosciences Paris-Saclay - NeuroPSI CNRS and offered three hands-on sessions to the 108 participants.

Over the course of the event, 24 speakers provided a comprehensive overview of cross-species comparison of neuroanatomy, physiology, behaviour and computational modelling.

Plenary sessions showcased latest advances in the field

During four plenary sessions on the cross-species comparison of neuroanatomy, physiology, behaviour and computational models, renowned speakers showcased latest key advancements in the field.

Talks covered the following topics:

• Similarities and differences between cortical cell types in different species
• Cognitive control by distinct prefrontal cortical output neurons 
• Prefrontal patterning and connectivity
• Associative neurons in brain evolution
• Virtual cortex shaping communication in the inter-areal networks
• Definition of rodent prefrontal cortex
• Prefrontal cortex in monkeys
• Functional maps of the mouse prefrontal cortex
• Marmoset prefrontal cortex
• A cross species comparison of brain-wide neural activity 
• Interactions between cortical neurons
• Circuit mechanism for sleep/wake dependent global ignitions
• Cingulate cortex and flexible behaviour
• Dopamine and cellular mechanisms of cognitive control in primate prefrontal cortex
• Neural representations of learned rules in mouse prefrontal cortex
• Cortico-subcortical contributions to flexible decision-making
• Human prefrontal cortex, symbols and languages: a hypothesis
• Inner programmes and information capacity in monkeys and human children
• Dynamical aspects of the structure-function relationship of the primate and human brains
• Encoding of offer value in orbitofrontal cortex
• Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and beyond
• Flexible task-switching: behavioural modelling and prefrontal cortex hippocampal interactions
• Circuit mechanism and bifurcation in space underlying distributed working memory

 Hands-on sessions allowed the participants to get involved and test the EBRAINS functionalities

Three hands-on sessions on The Multilevel Human Brain Atlas in EBRAINS and its software interfaces by Timo Dickscheid and Sebastian Bludau (Forschungszentrum Jülich), Using Nilearn for machine learning analysis of functional connectivity by Yasmin Mzayek & Alexis Thual (INRIA) and Simulating (a)synchronous brain dynamics in EBRAINS using The Virtual Brain by Arnau Manasanch (IDIBAPS) demonstrated the EBRAINS functionalities to participants and assisted them to explore the services to help them conduct their research moving forward.

Discussions were the main focus point

After each plenary session, a dedicated discussion slot lead to fruitful debates between the speakers and the audience. The interactive format of the workshop allowed speakers as well as participants, from largely diverse fields to interact and discuss, which fostered novel insights as well as more coherence and clarity in the relevant terminology, formats and important research directions. The outcome of the talks and discussions is planned to be manifested in a document that is going to be shared with all participants and the wider scientific community.

This workshop brought together experimental and computational scientists whose work allowed a comparison of the anatomy and function of the PFC between species (in particular between humans, monkeys, mice and birds).

A huge thank you to all co-organisers, speakers, tutors, students and participants the event was a great success and the contributions to this event resulted in lively discussions and future collaborations.