EBRAINS CoCreate Digital Brain Health

The workshop series EBRAINS CoCreate Digital Brain Health seek to strengthen research networks and cocreate research and innovation (R&I) roadmaps that will strengthen research, practice, and innovation for Prevention, Diagnostics, Prognosis and Adaptation of neurological disorders.

“If a single brain image can tell us a huge amount about one patient with one condition, how much more could we learn if we could compare every image of every patient with that condition?”

With disease signatures researchers hope to find patterns for better diagnostics of brain diseases. This will allow for early diagnosis and treatment of neurological and psychological disorders and may even allow us to prevent some diseases.

With brain resilience the hope is that understanding neurobiological mechanisms that contribute to resilience in human brains lead to improved prevention, prognosis and adaptation of neurological disorders.

When research projects aim to identify a specific disease, they require a lot of data from the brain. Additional data, such as the patient’s health history, their lifestyle, and genetic data can improve the overall research. Although medical researchers can access data in their own hospital relatively easily, access to data in other hospitals is much more difficult, as patient confidentiality, data protection and the incompatibility of ICT systems are major obstacles.

Therefore, researchers wish to share data with each other!

One such initiative is EBRAINS, a European neuroscience research infrastructure. EBRAINS offers services and ICT solutions which can overcome these constraints, while maintaining the confidentiality that is crucial to the medical profession. Still, international collaboration and sharing health data can be difficult because of different national standards, policies, and cultural norms for data use. Researchers, citizens, and relevant stakeholders therefore need to agree on principles for sharing these personal health data.

The ambition of the EBRAINS services is to allow researchers to exploit medical data, regardless of where it may be stored. Typically, brain diseases have been classified primarily by symptoms. The ability to run experiments using large datasets opens the possibility of applying powerful big data analytical approaches to identify new disease signatures, based on a broad range of factors, from molecular level to whole brain and observable disorders of cognition and behaviour, which should pave the way for improved diagnosis and hence better treatment outcomes.

Speaks and Discussion topics 

We aim at having 5-6 topics. At least five for the first workshop in Marssilie, france, and possibly one or two more discovered at the workshop.

The topics are:

1. Longitudinal Data Studies

In this topic we explore the opportunities for applying longitudinal data to digital brain health. What kind of brain research can be enabled if we have repeated data observations gathered and stored over a longer period of time? What kind of data and data storage possibilities should we explore? And what are the barriers for making this vision happen and where should we be careful? EBRAINS as a shared digital brain research infrastructure holds the potential to materialize this vision but it requires the input from a network like ours

2. Healthy Ageing

In this topic, we attend to the area of healthy ageing of the brain. We know there can be great individual variability in cognitive ageing trajectories. But what kind of research is necessary to understand why these variabilities occurs? Which risk factors should we focus on and what are the impacts of a possible shift in focus? Moreover, how we can best interpret the age-related changes and differences in brain structure, activation, and functional connectivity? With this topic as a part of the EBRIANS CoCreate, we hope to strengthen both the visions for research within healthy ageing and to engage the communities focusing on brain resilience and healthy brain trajectories.

3. Behavioral data and lifestyle data

In this topic we focus on the possibilities for incorporating behavioral data and lifestyle data to digital brain health. Our lifestyles and habits impact our brain health and our cognitive and mental wellbeing, but much more research is needed to understand the forces behind these impacts. How can we best integrate behavioral data and lifestyle data in studies of the brain? Which sources and possible collaborations should we approach? And what are the possible pitfalls of connecting clinical brain data with nonclinical brain data? At this EBRAINS CoCreate series, we aim to bring together various experts who can contribute to this topic from different views.

4. Data Curation and the knowledge graph

In this topic we explore the EBRAINS Knowledge Graph (KG). With the EBRAINS KG it is possible to acquire and share the data researchers need to make your next discovery. It is also enables researchers to connect to the software and hardware tools needed to analyze the data. However, brain research data can often be sensitive. So how do we preserve the possibilities to maximize on each other’s knowledge by opening the access to shared data? How do we secure the curation and sharing of brain data in the EBRAINS Knowledge Graph in a sustainable way? Together we can CoCreate how to shape the future for the EBRAINS KG.

5. A fifth topic focusing on psychiatry and mental health?

This topics is still under developmet.

Dates and outline of the workshop series

Information and workshop vision: Friday, September 2nd from 9.00 – 17.30 GMT+1 – Marseille, France

Defining challenges and solutions:  Tuesday, september 6th from 12.30 – 15.30 GMT+1 – Online

Initial R&I roadmap identification:  Tuesday, September 20^th from 12.30 – 15.30 GMT+1 – Online

Prioritize R&I roadmaps and establish alliances: Tuesday, September 27^th from 12.30 – 15.30 GMT+1 – Online

Realization, Lobbying and fundraising: Tuesday, October 11th from 9.00 – 17.30 GMT+1 – Marseille, France

Additional information

We aim at a maximum of 40 participants. Should we receive more enrollments, we will, based on a desire for diversity, select the 40 participants, and you will receive final confirmation of your participation.

Price: Free

We expect participants to:

• Engage actively in all workshops.
• Take active part in tasks and discussions in the group on community.ebrains.eu.
• Take part in discussions and bring your ideas and point of view to the table during the workshops

Venue in Marseille: VILLA MEDITERRANEE, Promenade Robert Laffont 13002 Marseille

Any questions? Don’t hesitate to write to Aske Palsberg and Francisca Nordfalk on community@ebrains.eu, with the title ‘EBRAINS CoCreate’.

Join EBRAINS CoCreate now! Press the big green button to enroll