September 9, 2024
EBRAINS
The digital user infrastructure EBRAINS, which originated from the Human Brain Project, provides researchers worldwide with access to brain atlases, brain models, around 200 tools, and countless data.
What happens in our heads? Jülich brain researchers are striving to decode the brain. They aim to understand how our brain is structured and how it functions. And they seek to take the fear out of neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Their findings are also used to develop new computer technologies.
With its 86 billion neurons and an even greater number of synapses, through which information travels from cell to cell, the human brain is incredibly complex. Scientists from Jülich aim to unlock its secrets. One of their goals is to understand how our brain develops over the course of a lifetime and how cognitive processes take place in the healthy and diseased brain. They hope that this research will lead to new approaches for treating neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease.
The Julich Brain Atlas is the most detailed map of the human brain to date. As a kind of ‘Google Maps’, this unique tool offers a wealth of data – and the opportunity to use Jülich’s supercomputers to analyse them. This makes the atlas a key component of the EBRAINS digital research infrastructure, which is available to researchers worldwide.
The researchers at the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine conduct their work using the unique research infrastructure at Jülich. With the help of supercomputers, they create “maps” of the neurons and nerve fibres in the brain from thousands of microscopic images. In our powerful MRI scanners, the scientists are discovering where thoughts originate. Artificial intelligence helps to interpret the data. Using methods from nuclear chemistry, they examine the brain on a molecular level to understand the mechanisms controlling the sleep–wake rhythm, for example, or to find out where caffeine acts in the brain. In close cooperation with university hospitals such as those in Aachen, Cologne, and Düsseldorf, scientists are also further developing current examination methods.
Globally networked brain research
The Human Brain Project, in which Forschungszentrum Jülich played a key role, was a milestone in brain research. The project, which was completed in autumn 2023, has enriched the tools of brain researchers worldwide with a unique platform: EBRAINS makes the largest database on the human brain to date freely available and links it to the possibilities of supercomputing – for example for simulations and AI-based analyses.
The core of this infrastructure is the Julich Brain Atlas. This extremely high-resolution 3D atlas developed at Jülich shows the anatomical structure and functional areas of the brain in unprecedented detail. Patients in 30 European hospitals are already benefiting from the huge collection of data on neurological diseases such as epilepsy, dementia, and brain trauma.
Computing just like the brain
Research into the human brain is entering a new phase thanks to digital possibilities. The immense computing power of supercomputers makes it possible to process increasingly large amounts of data. At the same time, information technology also benefits from breakthroughs in neuroscience. When developing new types of computer chips or machine learning, researchers use the human brain as their model. Its energy efficiency is simply unrivalled. It solves even complex brain teasers with a fraction of the energy that supercomputers require. The computing of tomorrow is inspired by the brain.
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Last Modified: 22.10.2024