Seminar: Opening up the Human Brain Project to the neuroscience community

On May 21st and 22nd, 2015, the European Institute for Theoretical Neuroscience (EITN) together with the Danish Board of Technology Foundation (DBT) of the Human Brain Project’s ‘’Science and Society” sub-project 12, hosted the expert seminar “Theory and data for advancing future neuroscience and the Human Brain Project (HBP)”. The seminar welcomed HBP researchers and neuroscientists outside of the HBP.

Find a brief overview of the seminar and its results here: Recommendations and report  and Organisation and background.

The Human Brain Project (HBP) is, in part, a response to the fragmentation of brain research and the data it produces. The HBP is an ambitious and highly interdisciplinary project, formulated as a very large integrated flagship research initiative. It is structured into thirteen subprojects (SPs): four Data and Theory subprojects (SP1 to SP4), six ICT platform subprojects (SP5 to SP10) and three cross-cutting subprojects for Applications, Ethics and Society and Management (SP11 to SP13).

In order to accelerate the pace of brain research, the HBP aims to provide an integrated infrastructure of six information and communications ICT platforms. The purpose of the platforms is to enable collaboration and data sharing between various disciplines within neuroscience, including clinical, translational and basic research. The facilities and tools developed in the HBP will eventually be made accessible for the entire neuroscience community. Thus, the aim with the platforms is that it should be an infrastructure that is useful for the entire neuroscientific community. The entrance to the platforms will be the HBP Collaboratory – a web-based portal intended to provide access to collaborators participating in research activity in the HBP and to external scientists from around world.

This seminar addresses two tasks, which the HBP is currently grappling with:

• The building of a user community for use and co-design of the ICT platforms
• The development of an on-going dialogue with the international neuroscientific community on the data and theory required for developing the platforms

For additional background information please see the HBP mediation report and the HBP 1st year technical review. Both are key documents in the future development of the HBP.