“Through initiatives like EBRAINS, Europe can lead in NeuroAI"

The future of brain research and its significance for Europe were addressed at the event “Cracking the Code of the Brain”, hosted by the European Commission's DG Connect on 19 February in the Copernicus building in Brussels. The event opened an exhibition of images from brain research conducted in the European Human Brain Project (HBP) and powered by EBRAINS’ research technologies. EBRAINS was built by the HBP as Europe's core digital infrastructure for brain research. 

Director General Roberto Viola acknowledged that the Human Brain Project and EBRAINS had done pioneering work in neuroscience and digital innovation, contributing to major advances in digital research technologies for neuroscience, medicine and artificial intelligence research. “EBRAINS is an example of cooperative science of the highest possible quality”. The Director General stressed his full support for EBRAINS as a lasting infrastructure in the European research landscape. 

“Through initiatives like EBRAINS, we have the opportunity to lead in the field of Neuro AI, the intersection of neuroscience and artificial intelligence”, emphasised Sabine Verheyen, First Vice-President of the European Parliament (EVP) in her welcome address. Verheyen highlighted the importance of the research technologies of EBRAINS for emerging medical applications: “EBRAINS provides an outstanding digital infrastructure for groundbreaking research into the treatment and understanding of brain related diseases. I urge my colleagues to recognise the strategic importance of digital neuroscience”. In summary, the Vice-President underlined that “EBRAINS is a cornerstone of Europe's efforts to remain a leader in medical research and innovation.” 

Prof. Katrin Amunts, joint CEO of EBRAINS and director of the Institute for Neuroscience and Medicine INM-1 at the Forschungszentrum Jülich, and Prof. Jan Bjaalie, Chief Infrastructure Officer of EBRAINS, from the University of Oslo, followed with keynote speeches outlining the vision of EBRAINS as a digital infrastructure for neuroscience and medicine. In her talk, Amunts explained how JUPITER – Europe's first exascale computer that’s being built at Forschungszentrum Jülich – will be used to develop a foundational AI model of the human brain. At the same time, advancements in "NeuroAI" benefit from our growing understanding of the brain – a "win-win situation". 

Prof. Bjaalie also addressed the key role of data for AI applications. He emphasised that EBRAINS hosts an expansive "ecosystem" of neuroscientific data, providing researchers with deeper insights into the brain and enabling diverse AI applications to the data. Bjaalie envisions EBRAINS’ data playing a key role in the "European Health Data Space". 

Closing the event,  the researchers offered a guided tour of the exhibition, which had previously been shown at the Commission’s Berlaymont building. 

The Human Brain Project was Europe’s largest brain research initiative to date, concluding in 2023 after a decade of collaborative work. At the intersection of neuroscience and information technology, the HBP explored the brain and its diseases using advanced methods from computer science, neuroinformatics, and artificial intelligence. It also drove innovation in fields such as brain-inspired computing and neurorobotics. The HBP gave rise to EBRAINS (European Brain Research Infrastructures) – a unique digital research infrastructure for neuroscience. 

Watch the event aftermovie below: