Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) Graduate University, Japan

TITLE: Brain/MINDS 2.0 and the Digital Brain Project

Abstract: Following the conclusion of the Brain/MINDS project (2014-2024), a new six-year program Multidisciplinary Frontier Brain and Neuroscience Discoveries (Brain/MINDS 2.0) has started. A remarkable feature of this program is that the Digital Brain plays a central role in integrating structural and dynamic brain data from multiple species for understanding brain functions and tackling neuropsychiatric disorders. This talk will present what is the Digital Brain of Brain/MINDS 2.0, how we can build that, and how we can use that. The primary aims of the Digital Brain Project are to develop open-source software tools for data-driven model building by integrating anatomical, genetic, physiological, and behavioral data from mice, marmosets, macaques and humans and to provide cloud-based platform for cross-species data search, data-driven model building, and simulation analyses. By utilizing those tools and platforms, we aim to build models that realize brain functions like reinforcement learning and Bayesian inference and reproduce neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson’s disease and psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia to help early diagnosis and exploration of therapeutic and preventive strategies. This ambitious project requires fresh talents from math, computation, AI and brain sciences, as well as broad international collaborations. Through this conference, we hope to extend our network with researchers and research projects with overlapping interests and technologies.

Biography: Kenji Doya is a Professor of Neural Computation Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) Graduate University. He studies reinforcement learning and probabilistic inference, and how they are realized in the brain. He took his PhD in 1991 at the University of Tokyo, worked as a postdoc at U. C. San Diego and the Salk Institute, and joined Advanced Telecommunications Research International (ATR) in 1994. In 2004, he was appointed as a Principal Investigator of the OIST Initial Research Project and as OIST established itself as a Graduate University in 2011, he became a Professor and served as the Vice Provost for Research till 2014. He served as a Co-Editor in Chief of Neural Networks from 2008 to 2021 and the Chairperson of Neuro2022 in Okinawa, and currently serves as the President of Japanese Neural Network Society (JNNS). He received INNS Donald O. Hebb Award in 2018, JNNS Academic Award and APNNS Outstanding Achievement Award in 2019, and the age-group 2nd place at Ironman Malaysia in 2022.

SEU-ALLEN Joint Center, Southeast University, China

TITLE: Toward Building a Whole Brain Connectome at Single Neuron Resolution

Abstract: In this talk I will discuss our work of a large-scale study of whole-brain morphometry, analyzing 3.7 peta-voxels of mouse brain images at the single-cell resolution, producing one of the largest multi-morphometry databases of mammalian brains to date. We annotated 3D locations of cell bodies of 182,497 neurons, modeled 15,441 dendritic microenvironments, characterized the full morphology of 1,876 neurons along with their axonal motifs, and detected 2.63 million axonal varicosities that indicate potential synaptic sites. Our analysis covers six levels of information related to neuronal populations, dendritic microenvironments, single-cell full morphology, sub-neuronal dendritic and axonal arborization, axonal varicosities , and sub-neuronal structural motifs, along with a quantification of the diversity and stereotypy of patterns at each level. Overall, our study provides an integrative description of key anatomical structures of neurons and their types, covering a wide range of scales and features, and contributes a large-scale resource to understanding neuronal diversity in the mammalian brain. With this dataset, we start to formulate a possible whole brain scale connectome at the single neuron resolution for mouse brains.

Biography: Hanchuan Peng (Fellow, IEEE, AIMBE, Founding Director – Institute for Brain and Intelligence; Founding Director – SEU-ALLEN INSTITUTE Joint Center) develops technologies to generate, manage, visualize, analyze, and understand massive-scale structure and function data related to brains and other biomedical applications. Peng was the Director – Advanced Computing, Allen Institute for Brain Science, and also an Affiliate Professor with University of Washington, University of Georgia, among others). Peng was also a PI with Janelia, HHMI. Peng’s original work include the widely cited mRMR feature selection algorithm, APP1/APP2 neuron reconstruction algorithms, Virtual Fingers, Vaa3D, TeraFly, TeraVR, etc. His workwas cited about 30,000 times, in a number of fields. Peng founded Bioimage Informatics conferences in 2005, and iconized Bioimage Informatics as a new field in major bioinformatics journals including Bioinformatics, BMC Bioinformatics, Nature Methods, Nature Biotechnology, etc. He was the co-Editor-in-Chief of Brain Informatics (2016-2020) and a Section Editor of BMC Bioinformatics (2011-2018), and Bioinformatics (2021-2024).

University of California, Irvine, USA

TITLE: Graphical Modeling of Brain Networks

Biography: Ramesh Srinivasan is a Professor of Cognitive Sciences and Biomedical Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. The primary focus of Srinivasan’s research is on developing signal processing and computational modeling to relate brain networks to cognitive functions. This foundational signal processing research has broad impact in clinical and cognitive neuroscience research. Dr Srinivasan’s PhD training in Biomedical Engineering at Tulane University was on the development of theoretical models of electroencephalography (EEG) largely contributed to the book (with Paul Nunez) Electric Fields of the Brain: The Neurophysics of EEG, 2nd ed., Oxford UP . He developed cognitive science and neuroscience expertise through postdoctoral training at the University of Oregon and at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego. He joined the faculty in Cognitive Sciences and Biomedical Engineering at the University of California, Irvine in 2000 and was Chair of the Cognitive Sciences department from 2012 to 2022. He was appointed a Senior Fellow of the US Army Research Lab in 2022. He has published more than 100 papers in EEG/MEG signal processing, theoretical computational neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience applications in perception, attention, and decision making, and clinical research especially focused on motor functions and stroke. His recent work is focused on graphical models of EEG, MEG, and fMRI signals that incorporate structural and functional modeling to develop probabilistic generative models of brain networks linked to behavior and clinical status.

University of California Los Angeles, USA

TITLE: Brain Dynamics and Flexible Behaviors

Abstract: Executive control processes and flexible behaviors rely on the integrity of, and dynamic interactions between, large-scale functional brain networks. The right insular cortex is a critical component of a salience/midcingulo-insular network that is thought to mediate interactions between brain networks involved in externally oriented (central executive/lateral frontoparietal network) and internally oriented (default mode/medial frontoparietal network) processes. How these brain systems reconfigure with development is a critical question for cognitive neuroscience, with implications for neurodevelopmental pathologies affecting brain connectivity. I will describe studies examining how brain network dynamics support flexible behaviors in typical and atypical development, presenting evidence suggesting a unique role for the dorsal anterior insular from studies of meta-analytic connectivity modeling, dynamic functional connectivity, and structural connectivity. These findings from adults, typically developing children, and children with autism suggest that structural and functional maturation of insular pathways is a critical component of the process by which human brain networks mature to support complex, flexible cognitive processes throughout the lifespan.

Biography: After receiving a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience from the Psychology Department at the University of California Los Angeles, Dr. Uddin completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Child Study Center at New York University. For several years she worked as a faculty member in Psychiatry & Behavioral Science at Stanford University. She recently returned to UCLA where she currently directs the Brain Connectivity and Cognition Laboratory and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience Analysis Core in the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. Within a cognitive neuroscience framework, Dr. Uddin's research combines functional and structural neuroimaging to examine the organization of large-scale brain networks supporting the development of social cognition and executive function. Her current projects focus on understanding dynamic brain network interactions underlying cognitive inflexibility in neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism spectrum disorder. Dr. Uddin's work has been published in the Journal of Neuroscience, Cerebral Cortex, JAMA Psychiatry, Biological Psychiatry, PNAS, and Nature Reviews Neuroscience. She was awarded the Young Investigator award by the Organization for Human Brain Mapping in 2017.