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Activities & Results

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Activities, awards, and other outputs

  • Organized with our collaborations at KI/KS a session during the SPIE conference 2021, presented the dBrain work there and participated in a panel discussion on AI in neurosciences (see https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2606005)
  • Organized the BrainNet workshop 2022 and presented our progress in the dBrain consortium (https://www.digitalfutures.kth.se/event/brainnet-workshop/)
  • Master thesis student Georgios Moschovis participated in the Image CLEF 2022 challenge and obtained 4th place in the concept detection challenge and 5th place in the caption prediction task.
  • SPIE 2021 presentation: Synaptic heterogeneity in the brain at single synapse resolution.
  • Presentation at KTH ML-day workshop 220117, “Machine learning-based unsupervised feature extraction from magnetoencephalography and eye-tracking data”.
  • Participation in the KTH ML-day and chairing one of the sessions.
  • In particular one of the software used and further developed in dBrain in WP1 is called Snudda, a software for setting up detailed microcircuit models. Snudda has been developed further to also be able to support the building of diseased neuronal networks. Snudda has been adopted by EBRAINS, and the use of Snudda to model the healthy and disease brain have been disseminated at various events listed below:
    • BCBT 2021 summer school: “How can one build and simulate basal ganglia microcircuits in a data-driven, bottom-up manner”
    • SPIE 2021: “Creating a microcircuit of the striatum using connectivity, morphological and electrophysiological data”
    • INCF workshop 2021: “Snudda: Open source tool for creating micro-circuits in silico” and “Dealing with neuron morphologies”
    • Baltic Neuroscience Summer School – September 2021
    • Codejam – November 2021: “Build NEURON microcircuits using touch detection with Snudda”
    • SWEBAGS conference – December 2021: “From Morphology to Microcircuity using Snudda”
    • BrainNet workshop KTH, May 2022: “Exploring striatum in health and disease using data-driven models”
    • FENS – July 2022 – Two posters using Snudda

Results

dBrain addresses two major challenges in our understanding of the brain in health and disease: a) what is the relationship between the structural connectivity and functional interactions between different brain regions and within local neuronal networks?; and b) how do disease-related slow changes in the chemical balance, gene expression and neuronal degeneration shape the brain activity dynamics? We address these challenges via four work packages (WPs), using digital approaches comprising AI-based data analysis, math, computational modelling and simulations.

With the help of Digital Futures, we created a vibrant environment involving three KTH schools and collaborators at KS and KI. In addition to regular weekly meetings at the Digital Futures for the whole consortium (i.e. PIs, the recruited postdocs, and other students), several subgroups also meet more frequently in one of the labs or via zoom. Also, several Master’s Student projects have been completed in addition to the work of PhD students and postdocs. In the weekly meetings, postdocs have particular roles – regularly presenting updates on their work and journal articles selected for general interest. These activities provide the postdocs with training in presenting their work and leading discussions. The postdocs also have arranged team-building activities.