Neuroscience project receives €89m

The European Commission has released a payment of €89m for the Human Brain Project.

The project, which aims to have the first simulation of the human brain created by 2023, was given this funding after its second periodic review.  It received praise for making significant progress during the Ramp Up phase (October 2013-March 2016).

Acting Director of the European Commission Digital Excellence and Scientific Infrastructure Directorate, Thomas Skordas, said: “The Project is now ready and well-prepared to begin the next phase. The new governance and the specific grant agreement (SGA1) work plan provide the right basis for the Project to make significant progress in the coming two years towards reaching its overall goals.”

The money was released after signing the first specific grant agreement with the Human Brain Project (HBP) coordinator, the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), the first SGA1 means funding will be provided retrospectively from 1^st April 2016 until the end of March 2018.

The HBP, started in 2013, is composed of six new informatics-based platforms across Europe. It aims to accelerate understanding of the human brain as well as to make advances in defining and diagnosing brain disorders.

The University of Manchester are contributing one of the programmes, SpiNNaker (Spiking Neural Network Architecture). It is made up of 500,000 microprocessors that emulate how neurons fire signals in real time. It can be used to accurately model areas of the brain and test hypotheses about the workings of the brain.

ICL Professor of Computer Engineering at the University of Manchester, Steve Furber, said: “We are very pleased that the funding for the next phase of the Human Brain Project has been confirmed, enabling us to continue to offer the SpiNNaker platform to our growing international user community and to progress the development of a second generation machine.”