“EBRAINS is key in the European landscape for brain health” - EBRAINS Summit 2025 opens in Brussels

EBRAINS is Europe’s digital research infrastructure for brain research. This year's EBRAINS Summit partners with the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF) to support the shared mission of both organisations. The event brings together hundreds of neuroscientists, policymakers, technologists and innovators to explore the future of brain research and its impact on society.

Welcome addresses were given by Kilian Gross, Director for Enabling and Emerging Technologies at the European Commission's DG CNECT, Anders Dam Jensen, Executive Director European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking, and Joint CEOs of the EBRAINS AISBL Katrin Amunts and Philippe Vernier. Brain researcher Rafael Yuste from Columbia University then delivered the first scientific keynote, starting off a rich three-day programme with over 70 speakers. 

During his welcoming speech, Kilian Gross reflected on the development of the EBRAINS infrastructure from the Flagship Human Brain Project (2013-2023). “From the beginning, your approach was a highly visionary one,” said Gross. “The EBRAINS Summit 2025 represents a new chapter.” The director highlighted that EBRAINS is becoming the reference infrastructure for all in neuroscience who are working with large data sets. He stressed that the digital technologies that EBRAINS offers for neuroscience are fundamental, and that the EBRAINS community is well positioned to contribute to Europe's AI factories in the medical applications area. Gross believes that EBRAINS will be “an architect of an era of brain-inspired innovation that blurs the boundaries of biology, AI, and medicine.” 

Anders Dam Jensen presented Europe's supercomputing advances through the HPC Joint Undertaking, a major initiative for High Performance Computing that this year brought the first European Exascale system JUPITER online in Jülich, Germany. To illustrate the immense power of the supercomputer he said: “Let’s assume that every human on Earth is able to do a high-precision calculation every second. Then it would take all of the world population four years to do what JUPITER does in a second.” The first neuroscience application on JUPITER uses EBRAINS’ high-quality data and atlasing tools to show the scalability of AI-powered brain mapping.

Katrin Amunts, Joint CEO of the EBRAINS AISBL, welcomed the over 500 registrants from 58 countries. “Please use the opportunity of the summit to discover EBRAINS,” Amunts said. The brain researcher highlighted the advances made in the last two years since the beginning of the EBRAINS 2.0 project: from the integration of Glia cells in neural simulation models, to new research on brain cancer through improved views of the brain's connectivity and widely used AI training data sets on EBRAINS, and newly published brain-derived AI algorithms. “Advanced neuroscience is going hand-in-hand with technological realisations and new patents,” said Amunts. Similarly, Amunts highlighted scientific advances by researchers who are not themselves part of any of the EBRAINS projects but use the infrastructure for their work. She also highlighted work for patients, like the Virtual Brain Twin project on EBRAINS.

“EBRAINS is key in the European landscape for brain health,” stressed Philippe Vernier. The French neuroscientist, who co-leads the EBRAINS AISBL, also emphasised the many mechanisms through which users shape the development of the infrastructure. “EBRAINS is made by the community and for the community,” said Vernier, and, addressing the audience: ”EBRAINS is yours.”

Rafael Yuste from Columbia University in New York, one of the initiators of the US Brain Initiative and currently spearheading the Spanish Neurotechnology Initiative, closed the first session with a broad view on the development of brain research and the impact of neurotechnology.

Medical data for enabling progress in healthcare in Europe and beyond

A joint EBRAINS-INCF panel explored how FAIR medical data can accelerate healthcare innovation in Europe and beyond. Speakers emphasized the importance of shared standards, trusted digital platforms and high-quality curated datasets to enable collaboration across borders and disciplines.

EPINOV: Virtual Brain Twins and epilepsy surgery

The EPINOV clinical trials were the focus of a session on epilepsy research. Researchers demonstrated how virtual brain twins can be used to model surgical strategies, with the aim of improving outcomes for drug-resistant epilepsy patients. With trial results expected in early 2026, the approach could pave the way for more precise and more successful epilepsy surgery – and for applications beyond epilepsy.

Google Summer of Code

The Google Summer of Code session highlighted EBRAINS’ role in fostering open-source neuroscience software. Projects developed through GSoC showed how early-career developers are contributing tools that improve data registration, metadata handling and interoperability within the EBRAINS ecosystem.

Neurology

The session “Setting new standards in neurology in Europe” featured talks by Frank Winkler, a pioneer in cancer neuroscience – a field that has grown rapidly in recent years – and Masud Husain, who shared his perspectives as professor of Neurology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Oxford and editor-in-chief of Brain. The session concluded with a presentation by Maurizio Corbetta, who showcased the work of the EBRAINS Medical Analytics work package on multimodal data collection aimed at improving the diagnosis and treatment of neurological disorders.

Your Brain on Beethoven: science meets art

The day closed with a standout artistic performance combining music, neuroscience and visual art. Violinist Stella Chen and pianist Mei Rui performed Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata while real-time brain-computer interface visualisations revealed neural dynamics during the performance.

As they performed, real-time Brain-Computer Interface visualisations - developed and recorded by AccelNet - displayed on screen representations of their neural activity. Scalp EEG, eye-tracking and synchronised hardware revealed shifts in alpha, gamma and delta waves across the sonata’s dramatic, meditative and galloping movements.

The experiment supported by an explanatory Q&A part showcased how elite musicians enter flow states, synchronise their brains and adapt to acoustic and emotional environments.

Artist-designed visuals made visible the synchronisation of the musicians neural dynamics of performance, transforming complex neural signals into an immersive show for the audience: a floating, shimmering interplay of signals.

Beyond the stage, the initiative feeds into the Music-in-Medicine programme, exploring how sound influences stress biomarkers and clinical performance. Ultimately, Dr. Mei Rui highlighted a long-term goal of developing personalised music profiles in healthcare, recognising acoustics as a powerful tool to affect brain activity and reduce stress.