Stroke-caused cognitive and neuromotor impairment is currently an increasing burden: post-stroke deficits are commonly believed to be treated with rehabilitation. Direct medical costs of stroke are stimated to increase up to 94.3 billion USD only in US. The indirect costs, including non-healthcare costs, are estimated at 15.9 billion. The journey towards recovery includes several stages, from hospitalization to in-patient and out-patient rehabilitation and the subsequent return to home. Not everyone has access to rehabilitation programs, and the gains of them tend to deteriorate after hospital discharge. Focused stroke rehabilitation reduces long-term disability and the economic burden of stroke and supports prevention by lessening modifiable risks. The objective of PHRASE (Personalised Health cognitive assistance for RehAbilitation SystEm) is to create a workflow that integrates the best available scientific knowledge and obtain an efficient prognosis and intervention protocols for stroke and other brain-related diseases. It will not only allow to treat stroke-caused impairments better and more efficiently, but also it is a potential treatment for other neurological diseases like dementia, aphasia and PSCI, depression or multiple sclerosis. Eodyne's PHRASE will be based on RGS previous technology, developing its Technology Readiness Level. The present consortium brings together a comprehensive group of highly qualified experts. So that Eodyne can successfully produce prognosis and intervention individualized protocols, EBRAINS will be the brain database and Charit? will provide with its brain models for the combination of data brain. IBEC's SPECS-Lab will bring its knowledge in cognitive rehabilitation and will act as clinical coordinator, while Saddlepoint Science brings the expertise to implement the AI tools for continuous improvement of the intervention protocols.

The Coordination and Support Action (CSA) BrainHealth will lay the ground for an envisaged ‘European Partnership (EP) on Brain Health’. Twenty participants from 11 Member and Associated States and Third countries will jointly pursue the work plan. The overall objective of the CSA is to sizeably contribute to maintenance and restoration of brain health for citizens in Europe and worldwide. Specifically, the project aims to design a collaboration framework for the EP as an umbrella for existing initiatives and stakeholder communities in this area. The CSA will create a common understanding of achievements, gaps and future developments in European research into brain health, and derive from them priorities and opportunities in a Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA). Intense consultation with representatives of Member and Associated States is expected to lead to adoption of the SRIA and development of an implementation plan that will allow for strategic alignment of regional and national research programmes and commitments to the EP. Research infrastructures and platforms will be analysed regarding their service opportunities, and solutions will be developed to facilitate data and material sharing in the area of brain health. For highest possible impact, the CSA will reach out to the most relevant globally acting initiatives and their brain research strategies and policies. Synergies will be identified to shape the international landscape and establish new while maintaining existing collaboration. Finally, the CSA activities will be embedded in thoroughly planned dissemination and communication activities and an efficient management structure.

EBRAINS is a collaborative European Research Infrastructure designed to advance and accelerate progress in neuroscience and brain health. This innovative infrastructure, a legacy of the Human Brain Project (HBP), is an ecosystem where researchers, clinicians and experts from various disciplines converge to explore and analyze brain complexity – from molecular and cellular levels to the functioning of the entire organ. Therefore, the project aims to create a new standard for brain atlases from the micro- to the macro-scale, link foundational multi-level data and connectomes in the healthy and pathological brain with atlases and models, create digital twins through modelling and simulation as well as unique, excellent, and preferred services for FAIR neuroscience data. The overarching goal of EBRAINS 2.0 is to foster a deeper understanding of brain structure and function with dedicated and mature software tools, to facilitate the development of more effective treatments, new drugs, diagnostics and preventive measures for neuro-psychiatric disorders. We expect that EBRAINS 2.0 catalyzes progress in the field of large-scale models running on HPC towards Exascale and leads to innovative solutions for neuro-inspired computing, and cognitive technologies such as neurorobotics and AI. Sophisticated digital modeling and data analytics capabilities will benefit communities beyond neuroscience, such as biomedicine. We will advance EBRAINS technology, platform services and the base infrastructure roadmap, educate and train a new community of users and developers from academia, industry and SMEs, and ensure knowledge transfer. EBRAINS 2.0 will become the neuroscience hub in the European infrastructure landscape, through building strong links with the European data spaces, EOSC and EuroHPC JU, centers of excellences and other initiatives. Globally, EBRAINS 2.0 will make a strong contribution to the new era of digital neuroscience and foster European leadership in this field.

The Human Brain Project (HBP) is a major European scientific research initiative to improve our understanding of the brain and the role it plays in making us human, and to exploit the opportunities offered by the resulting knowledge. The size and complexity of the brain make this an expensive undertaking, but the costs associated with our current ignorance are rising and the potential gains from better insight into the brain are increasing. Brain-related diseases, many of which are age-related, now represent a major part of the global health burden and there are both ethical and economic imperatives to keep the growing number of older people healthier and more productive. Economic advantage is increasingly linked to artificial intelligence (AI), our ability to create technology to extract, manipulate and harness knowledge. The HBP’s comprehension of what makes the human brain so efficient and flexible should help to maintain Europe’s competitiveness and innovation potential in this area. The HBP is one of several brain research initiatives and projects around the world, albeit one of the first, but it is unique in a number of ways. Only the HBP has an explicit focus on both neuroscience and computing. It is also the broadest and most integrated brain initiative, and the only one aiming to build a research infrastructure to accelerate brain research. The HBP is a FET Flagship which started under FP7 and continues under H2020 with a succession of Specific Grant Agreements (SGAs) under a Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA). In its FP7 Ramp-Up Phase (2013-16) and subsequent SGA1 funding period (2016-18), the HBP implemented a scientific project of rare ambition, breadth and scale, and forged its diverse constituents into a functioning entity. On the scientific side, it not only identified critical gaps in our understanding of the brain, but also created tools and obtained data to fill many of them. It designed, built and demonstrated six ICT research platforms, supporting neuroinformatics, brain simulation, high-performance analytics and computing, medical informatics, brain-inspired computing and linking of simulated brains to robotic bodies. The results have been made available to the scientific community. The HBP also learnt to address underperformance and conflicts, and opened up the Project via competitive calls and the integration of Partnering Projects. In the upcoming SGA2 funding period (2018-20), the HBP will continue to strengthen global brain research efforts by extending coordination with other brain initiatives and projects. Internally, it will continue its unique inter-disciplinary co-design approach, developing research infrastructure capabilities via use cases built around specific research needs. This approach will underpin its critical scientific work of understanding how to bridge between the different scales of brain organisation, a key prerequisite to understand the principles of brain organisation. It will include gathering data to support detailed modelling, notably of the human hippocampus, as well as structural, functional and connectivity data to improve systemic understanding of the whole brain. The HBP will also investigate brain similarities and differences between individuals and between species. It will model key brain functions, including visual recognition, slow-wave activity, episodic memory and consciousness in rodents and humans, and elaborate their cognitive architectures. In addition, it will develop simplified brain models to support further development of brain-inspired computing. SGA2 will see the individual infrastructure platforms extended and integrated into the HBP Joint Platform (HBP-JP). The JP will make HBP services more robust and improve the user experience, encouraging wider use of its tools. SGA2 should thus see a shift from supplier-driven to user-driven capabilities, while the infrastructure underpinning them will be tied closely into EU efforts to integrate and stre

This ESFRI Preparation Phase Project will place the EBRAINS research infrastructure (RI) developed by the Human Brain Project (HBP) on a sustainable footing. The new organisational framework will allow EBRAINS to evolve from the largely EC-funded, HBP-developed RI into a sustainable “Hub-and-Node” RI on the ESFRI Roadmap. The Operation Phase EBRAINS RI will serve the whole brain research community, rather than the needs of a subset of users within that community; this will be reflected in a broader offering of tools and services by the RI. The Operation Phase RI will focus more on the processing, managing and sharing of data of all sorts, even those generated outside the RI, but will retain an important role in providing cutting-edge data-generating tools and services. While staying true to its roots in supporting basic research, it will expand its activities to support clinical research and innovative exploitation of brain-related technologies. The evolving RI offering will be determined with the help of a new governance structure, which focuses on determining the priority needs of the broad brain research community. The Operation Phase EBRAINS will be funded primarily by long-term commitments by the EU Member States and Associated Countries that are home to a Node in the EBRAINS RI. Objective 1: To put in place a financial, legal and governance framework for EBRAINS and prepare a plan to ensure the sustainable offering of the Service Capability by the Central Hub and the Nodes. Objective 2: To obtain the legally binding commitment of EBRAINS Consortium Partners to offer services needed by the brain research community by setting up EBRAINS Nodes. Objective 3: To deliver a complete overall technical design and associated cost estimate for the Service Capability. Objective 4: To decide the legal structure that EBRAINS will adopt for the Operation Phase and produce draft statutes for EBRAINS in that structure.