In early 2013, the Euro­pean Union selected the Human Brain Project, coor­di­nated by Lausanne’s Fed­eral Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy (EPFL), as the recip­i­ent of over 1 bil­lion euros/ 1.3 bil­lion dol­lars over the next ten years. How can the research agenda of this major ini­tia­tive, and closely related ones, be orga­nized and aug­mented with part­ner­ships with the pri­vate sec­tor and cross-sector stake­hold­ers? How can we start build­ing brain heath inno­va­tion plat­forms and deliv­ery sys­tems at the inter­sec­tion of neu­ro­science, IT, and engineering? - Chair: Hilal Lashuel, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor at the Swiss Fed­eral Insti­tute of Technology-Lausanne (EPFL), YGL Class of 2012 - Sean Hill, co-Director of the Blue Brain Project and co-Director of Neu­roin­for­mat­ics in the Human Brain Project (HBP) at the Swiss Fed­eral Insti­tute of Technology-Lausanne (EPFL) This session took place at the 2013 SharpBrains Virtual Summit: http://sharpbrains.com/summit-2013/agenda/

1. 1

2. Chaired by: Hilal Lashuel
Associate Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute
of Technology-Lausanne (EPFL), YGL Class
of 2012
Sean Hill,
co-Director of the Blue Brain Project and co-
Director of Neuroinformatics in the Human Brain
Project (HBP) at the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology-Lausanne (EPFL)
How can we harness the Human Brain Project to
maximize its future health and well-being benefits?

3. The Human Brain Project
Co-Executive Directors:
Henry Markram, Brain Mind Institute, EPFL, Switzerland
Karlheinz Meier, Kirchoff Institute, University of Heidelberg, Germany
Richard Frackowiak, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, CHUV, Switzerland
Sean Hill
Co-Director, Neuroinformatics, Human Brain Project
Director, Neuroinformatics, Blue Brain Project
EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

4. 4
Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,Rains
from the sky a meteoric showerOf facts . . . they
lie unquestioned, uncombined.Wisdom enough
to leech us of our illIs daily spun; but there
exists no loomTo weave it into fabric;
Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1939

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6. 6

7. 7
Developmental Disorders
’
Adolescent Disorders
’
Adult Disorders
’
’
’
Aging Disorders
Glutamate
Nutrition
Dopamine
Genes
Sugar
GABA
Myelin
Serotonin
Metals
Dopamine
Toxins
Acetylcholine
Protein misfolding

8. 9
Microarrays Electron
Microscopy
Confocal
Microscopy
Single Cell PCR
Protein
quantification
Magnetic bead
Gene
sequencing
Gene silencing
Gene over-
expression Genetic vectors
Two-hybrid
system
Protein
separation
Wholecell &
Inside-Out Patch
Laser micro-
dissection
Cell culture
Fluorescence
microscopy
Cellular
tracing
Cell
sorting
In situ
hybridization
Rhodopsin
vectors
Immuno-detection
amplified by T7
Mass-
spectroscopy
Organelle
transfection
Spatial
Proteomics
Immuno-
staining
Multi Electrode Array
Extracellular Recording
Dye Imaging 2DE proteomics Tissue
transfection
Enzymatic-activity measurement
Behavioral Studies Ultramicroscopy
Magnet Resonance
Diffusion Imaging
fMRI EEG Transgenic lines

9. What is the Human Brain Project?
A 10-year European initiative
to launch a global,
collaborative effort to
understand the human brain,
enabling advances in
neuroscience, medicine and
future computing.
One of the two final projects
selected for funding as a FET
Flagship from 2013.
A consortium of 256
researchers from 146
institutions, in 24 countries
across Europe, in the US,
Japan and China.

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What is a FET Flagship?
Future and Emerging
Technologies (FET) Flagships
are ambitious large-scale,
science-driven, research
initiatives
that aim to achieve a visionary
goal.
The scientific advance should
provide a
strong and broad basis for
future technological innovation
and economic exploitation in a
variety of areas, as well as
novel benefits for society.
Objective is to keep Europe
competitive and drive

11. Goal
The Human Brain Project
should:
•Lay the technical
foundations for a new
model of ICT-based brain
research
•Drive integration between
data and knowledge from
different disciplines
•Catalyze a community
effort to achieve a new
understanding of the brain,

12. Research Areas
Neuroscience
Integrate everything we know about the
brain into computer models and
simulations
Medicine
Contribute to understanding, diagnosing
and treating diseases of the brain
Future Computing
Learn from the brain to build the
supercomputers of tomorrow

13. 14
Scientific organization

14. Data
Generate and interpret
strategically selected data
needed to build multilevel
atlases and unifying
models of the brain.

15. 16
The Data Ladder to the Human Brain

16. Data
However,
HBP is NOT primarily a data generation project
It IS a data integration project.

17. 18
Build, Simulate and Validate Unifying
Brain Models

18. Six new ICT platforms:
•Neuroinformatics
•Brain Simulation
•Medical Informatics
•High Performance
Computing
•Neuromorphic Computing
•Neurorobotics
For the entire research
community.
ICT Platforms

19. 20
Neuroinformatics Platform
Provide technical capabilities
to federate neuroscience data,
analyze structural and
functional brain data and to
build and navigate multi-level
brain atlases. This involves:
•spatial and temporal data
registration
•ontology development and
semantic annotation
•predictive neuroscience
•machine learning, data
mining
•track provenance, build
workflows.
Goal: enable an integrated

20. 21
Data management strategy
’

21. 22
Knowledge integration strategy
neurolex.org

22. 23
Multiscale and Multimodal Brain
Atlases
Atlases -
collections of
spatially and
semantically
registered and
searchable data,
models and
literature
Highly controlled
data for building
models
Other data for
validations

23. 24
Brain Simulation Platform
Provide technical capabilities to
build and simulate multi-scale
brain models at different levels
of detail.
•internet portal for
neuroscientists
•modeling tools
•workflows
•simulation
•virtual instruments (EM, LFP,
fMRI, etc)
•link to virtual body and
environment
•in silico experiments
Goal: Integrate large volumes of
heterogeneous data in multi-
scale models of the mouse and
human brains, and to simulate

24. 25
Ontology and Index
Representation Mapping
Region Geometry
Volume
Dendrogram 3D Points
Volume Mesh
Electrodynamics and Phenomenological Descriptions
PhysicalChemistry
FieldPhysicsandFluidDynamics
Surface Mesh
Particle Tracking
Microcircuit
Brain Simulation Platform: Multiscale
representations

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Brain Simulation Platform: Multiscale solvers

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Integration of laboratory data
27
S1L1 Neocortical
Microcircuit
30’000 neurons
400 Electrical Behaviors
Gene profiles
Synaptic profiles
Morphology profiles
Connectivity profiles
Electrical profiles
Circuit profiles
Protein profiles

27. Automatically building neuron models
g=gNa m3h
Inactivating Na Channel
Non Inactivating K Channel
g= gk n4
Distribution
•Staining, Literature, Assumed
•Given Somatic Distance Function
•Fitted within given tolerance
Relative Density
•Data constrained
•Generic algorithm
single cell rtPCR gene
expression profile
Ion Channels
1.Nap, Fast Na+
2.Natt, Persistent Na+
•Kfast, Delayed Rectifier K+
•Kslow, Slow K+
•Kt, Transient K+
•LVA Ca2+
•HVA Ca2+
•Ih, H-Current
•Im, M-Current
•BK, Large g, Ca2+ activated K+
•SK, Small g, Ca2+ activated K+
•Leak Current
Composition
•Single cell RT-PCR
•ISH expression distribution
•literature
~400 compartments
~8000 segments
?

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Brain Simulation Platform
Data-driven biophysical single cell models
Hay et al., PLOS Comp. Biology, 2012

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Predictive Neuroscience: One example
Hill et al. PNAS 2012
2,970 possible synaptic pathways
in a cortical microcircuit alone.
22 have been characterized.
Can we identify principles
to predict the rest?

30. 31
Brain Simulation Platform
Cortical microcircuitry

31. 32
Brain Simulation Platform
Cortical microcircuitry and local field potential
Reimann et al., Neuron, 2013 in collaboration with the Allen Institute, Seattle, WA

32. 33
Simulated in vitro cortical slice preparations
Brain Simulation Platform

33. 34
High Performance Computing Platform
Provide the project and the
community with:
•The computing power
necessary to build and simulate
models of the brain.
•Develop new supercomputing
technology, up to the exascale
•Drive new capabilities for
interactive computing and
visualization.

34. 35
Computational Complexity
Memory Requirements
O(1 MB)
O(10 GB)
O(1 TB)
O(100 TB)
O(100 PB)
Single Cell Model
Cellular Neocortical Column
O(10,000x cell)
Cellular Mesocircuit
O(100x NCC)
Cellular Rat Brain
O(100x Mesocircuit)
Cellular Human Brain
O(1,000x Rat Brain)
O(Gigaflops) O(10 Teraflops) O(100 Teraflops) O(1 Petaflops) O(1 Exaflops)
EPFL 4-rack BlueGene/L
CADMOS 4-rack BlueGene/P
Reaction-Diffusion O(1,000x memory)
Reaction-Diffusion O(1,000x memory)
Reaction-Diffusion O(1,000x memory)
Glia-Cell Integration O(10x memory)
Vasculature O(1x memory)
Particles O(10-100x memory)
Reaction-Diffusion O(1,000x memory)
Glia-Cell Integration O(10x memory)
Vasculature O(1x memory)
Reaction-Diffusion O(100-1,000x performance)
Plasticity O(1-10x performance)
Local Field Potentials (1x performance)
Reaction-Diffusion O(100-1,000x performance)
Glia-Cell Integration O(1-10x performance)
Vasculature O(1x performance)
Electric Field Interaction O(1-10x performance)
Plasticity O(1-10x performance)
Reaction-Diffusion O(100-1,000x performance)
Glia-Cell Integration O(1-10x performance)
EEG (1-10x performance)
Vasculature O(1x performance)
Plasticity O(1-10x performance)
Behavior O(10-100x performance)
Reaction-Diffusion O(100-1,000x performance)
High Performance Computing Challenges

35. 36
Medical Informatics
•Federate clinical data from
hospital archives and proprietary
databases, while providing
strong protection for patient
data.
•Enable researchers to identify
“biological signatures” of
diseases.
Develop new approaches to
understanding the causes of
disease and identifying effective
treatments

36. 37
Disease signatures

37. 38
Neuromorphic Computing Platform
Simulate models on low
power chips. Build off of
BrainScaleS and
Spinnaker projects to
provide ability to run large-
scale simulations at or
beyond real time with low
power consumption.

38. 39
Neurorobotics Platform
Virtual bodies, sensory
input and environments to
couple with the
simulations. This platform
is key to providing sensory
input to the simulations
and depicting the motor
outputs.

39. 40
Applications: Understanding principles of
cognition

40. Applications: Developing new drugs for brain
disorders

41. Applications: Developing neuromorphic controllers

42. Theory
Theory enables effective application of knowledge about the brain to
medicine or computing.

43. Society and Ethics
“A far-reaching Society and Ethics program, funding academic research into the
potential social and economic impact of HBP research, and its ethical and
conceptual implications…
…managing programs to raise ethical and social awareness among HBP
researchers, and, above all, encouraging an intense dialog with stakeholders
and with civil society.”

44. 45
Participating Scientists

45. ~20% of funding (~200M€) allocated to open calls

46. 4848
For more information and
a full list of leaders, partners
and collaborators
please visit:
www.humanbrainproject.eu
The Initial HBP Consortium

47. 49
Q&A
10 minutes
(Included in session
recording)

48. Sponsors
Partners
Thank You for
Joining Us!

49. To Learn More…
Summit
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com/book/
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