ABSTRACT

Understanding the human brain is one of the greatest challenges facing 21st century science. If

we can rise to the challenge, we can gain fundamental insights into what it means to be human,

develop new treatments for brain diseases and build revolutionary new Information and

Communications Technologies (ICT). In this report, we argue that the convergence between ICT

and biology has reached a point at which it can turn this dream into reality. It was this realization

that motivated the authors to launch the Human Brain Project – Preparatory Study (HBP-PS) - a

one year EU-funded Coordinating Action in which nearly three hundred experts in neuroscience,

medicine and computing came together to develop a new “ICTaccelerated” vision for brain

research and its applications. Here, we present the conclusions of our work. We find that the

major obstacle that hinders our understanding the brain is the fragmentation of brain research

and the data it produces. Our most urgent need is thus a concerted international effort that can

integrate this data in a unified picture of the brain as a single multi-level system. To reach this

goal, we propose to build on and transform emerging ICT technologies. In neuroscience,

neuroinformatics and brain simulation can collect and integrate our experimental data,

identifying and filling gaps in our knowledge, prioritizing and enormously increasing the value

we can extract from future experiments. In medicine, medical informatics can identify biological

signatures of brain disease, allowing diagnosis at an early stage, before the disease has done

irreversible damage, and enabling personalized treatment, adapted to the needs of individual

patients. Better diagnosis, combined with disease and drug simulation, can accelerate the

discovery of new treatments, speeding up and drastically lowering the cost of drug discovery. In

computing, new techniques of interactive supercomputing, driven by the needs of brain

simulation, can impact a vast range of industries, while devices and systems, modelled after the

brain, can overcome fundamental limits on the energy-efficiency, reliability and programmability

of current technologies, clearing the road for systems with brain-like intelligence. The

supercomputer and hardware technologies we need are rapidly improving their performance,

following well-established industry roadmaps. In other essential technologies, European

academic institutions already lead the world. The vision we propose would leverage these

strengths, driving a radical transformation of ICT and brain research, and enabling European bio-

tech, pharmaceutical and computing companies to pioneer the development of what are likely to

become some of the largest and most dynamic sectors of the world economy. Realizing this

vision and ensuring a leading role for European companies and researchers will require a

massive longterm research effort, going far beyond what can be achieved ina typical European

research project or by any one country. As a foundation for this effort, we propose to build an

integrated system of ICT-based research platforms, which without resolving all open problems,

would allow neuroscientists, medical researchers and technology developers to dramatically

accelerate the pace of their research. Building and operating the platforms will require a clear

vision, strong, flexible leadership, long-term investment in research and engineering, and a

strategy that leverages the diversity and strength of European research. It will also require

continuous dialogue with civil society, creating consensus and ensuring the project has a strong

grounding in ethical standards.We estimate that the total cost would amount to Eur 1,190

million, spread over a period of ten years. Of this sum, Eur643 million would come from the

European Commission, the remainder from other sources. We expect that, as the value of the

platforms becomes apparent, this initial investment would trigger an avalanche of additional

public and industrial funding, making it possible to perform research that goes beyond the

precise limits we have indicated in this report.

These requirements can only be met by a project on the scale of a FET Flagship. In this

report, therefore, we propose that the European Commission launches such a Flagship. We call it

The Human Brain Project (HBP). We summarize the goal of the project as follows.The Human

Brain Project should lay the technical foundations for a new model of ICT-based brain research,

driving integration between data and knowledge from different disciplines, and catalysing a

community effort to achieve a new understanding of the brain, new treatments for brain disease

and new brain-like computing technologies.