1 November 2018 marked the launch of the European Brain Council (EBC)-coordinated EU project The European Brain Research Area (EBRA). A project to streamline and better co-ordinate brain research across Europe while fostering global initiatives.

HBP Scientific Research Director Katrin Amunts held the first impulse statement on “AI in Science” in the Falling Walls Circle event held in Berlin on November 8th. 

In HBP,  the team of Gregoire Courtine studies basic mechanisms of electrical spinal cord stimulation in a virtual experiment setup on the Neurorobotics Platform. They also developed personalized computational models for each patient that guided the placement of the electrode arrays over the spinal cord.

Members of the International Brain Initiative (IBI) have met in La Jolla, California following the historic agreement to establish the IBI that was made on the 8 December 2017, in Canberra Australia. The meeting was attended by HBP’s leader of the Neuroinformatics Platform Prof. Jan Bjaalie.

From 6-7 February 2019, the 3: HBP Student Conference will take place at Ghent University, Belgium. This annual event, organised by early-career researchers for early-career researchers, aims to encourage collaboration and scientific exchange across the various research fields relevant to the Human Brain Project.The programme includes keynote lectures by distinguished scientists from within and outside the Human Brain Project, student presentations and poster sessions as well as social events.

Prof. Dr. Karlheinz Meier was one of the founders of the Human Brain Project, and a member of the project’s executive management board, the Directorate, during the ramp-up phase. He was also Co-chair of the Project’s scientific leadership body - the HBP Science and Infrastructure Board (SIB) - responsible for Infrastructure Operations and, ex-officio, Infrastructure Operations Director. Last week, on Wednesday 24 October, Professor Meier - who had been ill for some time - suddenly passed away. Below his colleagues at the Human Brain Project pay tribute to Karlheinz Meier’s extraordinary contribution to the Human Brain Project.

In a world’s first, personalized brain modelling is providing the basis for a large-scale clinical trial in epilepsy.  The approach could bring the first breakthrough in decades for drug resistant epilepsy patients undergoing brain surgery.
 

With new high-resolution methods neuroscientists have been able to generate massive amounts of data about the healthy and diseased brain. But so far, this wealth of information in neuroscience has by far surpassed the ability to integrate and make sense of it. The HBP atlas systems offer a way to integrate vast and heterogeneous neuroscience data into common frameworks and better understand the multilevel organization of the brain.

Our host Maastricht University has produced a very nice video that gives a glimpse into our HBP Open Day 2018. We thank our partners in Maastricht and all other members of the organizing team, our speakers and presenters – and of course everyone who came to visit – for making it a great event!