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EUROPEAN COMMISSION
MEMO
Brussels, 30 April 2013
Questions and answers on 'European Month of the Brain'
What is the European Month of the Brain?
The 'European Month of the Brain' is an initiative of the European Commission which will
take place throughout May 2013. Everyone with an interest in brain research and
healthcare is invited to join and contribute to a month packed full of events and activities.
To date, more than 50 events in 19 countries are planned.
What are its aims?
Disorders of the brain affect every European family. At the same time they cause huge
damage to our economies through costs for medicines, visits to doctors, hospitalisations,
social services, nursing homes, time off work, early retirement and so on. Treatment and
care for those affected is already costing €1.5 million every minute in Europe and this
burden will rise as our populations age if we don't take action.
The European Commission initiated the Month of the Brain to step up our efforts in the
fight against brain diseases; to increase our awareness of the importance of brain research
and healthcare; to showcase EU achievements in these fields; to define new research and
policy directions; to improve the resource allocation for brain research and healthcare
within and between EU member states and associated countries; and to lift taboos around
brain health.
Is it only about health?
No. Brain research involves many disciplines from genetics, cell biology, physiology,
imaging, bioinformatics, anatomy and clinical investigations to behavioural sciences, ICT,
nanotechnology and nutrition. Unlocking the secrets of how the brain works could
therefore also open up a whole new universe of services and products for our economies.
What brain research is the EU already funding?
Through its 2007-13 research framework programme (FP7), the European Union has
already invested €1.9 billion into brain research and innovation. More than 1,200 projects
involving over 1,500 organisations have benefited from this unprecedented level of
support, distributed on the following areas:
Brain functions and processes: >€750 million
Neurodegenerative disorders: >€400 million
Neurological disorders: €400 million
MEMO/13/390
Neuropsychiatric disorders: >€280 million
Public Health: €75 million
Rare brain disorders: €70 million
EU-supported brain research and innovation comes in different shapes and formats,
including international collaborative projects, frontier research through the European
Research Council (ERC), public-private partnerships (e.g. Innovative Medicines Initiative),
networks (e.g. European Stroke Network), global co-operations (e.g. International
Initiative for Traumatic Brain Injury Research), training and mobility schemes for young
researchers, or the large-scale 'Human Brain Project'.
A detailed list of all projects and country-specific funding figures can be found in the new
publication: Brain research supported by the European Union 2007-2012. A unique
commitment.
Do you have examples of successful projects?
With FP7 funding of some €5.2 million, the PLASTICISE project, coordinated by
researchers at Cambridge University, has identified new pathways for treating Alzheimer's
disease, stroke, and brain or spinal injury. The project found new ways of restoring
plasticity – the ability to make new connections between nerve cells and repair or replace
other connections - in adults back to the level seen in children. The project has also
devised a new microscopy tool to map areas of the brain affected by stroke.
A significant investment of €23 million was made to set up, via the projects EU-GEI and
OPTIMISE, a new European schizophrenia platform that allows researchers to identify the
genetic, clinical and environmental factors involved in the emergence of the disease. It is
also a major step forward in relation to the optimised treatment and management of the
condition.
The INTERSTRESS project is using advanced ICT-based solutions to assess and treat a
condition that most of us experience: psychological stress. The user wears easy-to-use,
low cost and comfortable sensors to monitor heartbeat, respiration, sweat and other
physical indications of stress. The mobile application then takes the user through
relaxation exercises, scenes, and sounds in a virtual beach, forest, mountain or tropical
environment, adjusting the scenes and music to lower the user's stress levels. The 3Dbiofeedback app is currently undergoing clinical trials. In 2012 the project, supported with
€3 million in EU funding, won the UN-based World Summit Award Mobile for the best
mobile health application.
The three-year RENVISION project, launched in March, aims to help improve vision in
artificial systems. The project will study how our eye's retina receives and how our brain
encodes visual information. It will then use these insights to develop high-level computer
vision. This knowledge could allow computers to, for example, categorise natural scenes
(i.e. telling the difference between a beach and a forest) or recognise human action (i.e.
understanding if a person is walking or driving). This could help us give robots and
vehicles better navigation and environment awareness, improve object recognition and
image classification.
In the NEWMEDS project, supported by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI),
companies have pooled data to create the largest known database of studies on
schizophrenia. Thanks to this resource, the project has found that the length of clinical
trials (usually six weeks) in which patients on active treatment are compared to patients
taking a placebo (a mock treatment) could be shortened by one or two weeks. NEWMEDS
has also demonstrated how Copy Number Variations of genes may affect intellectual
disability, autism, and schizophrenia.
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Another IMI project, EUROPAIN, is paving the way for new treatments for chronic pain, a
condition affecting one in five Europeans. The team has identified the molecule behind the
pain of sunburn, a discovery which could also shed light on the pain caused by other
inflammatory conditions like arthritis. Also supported via IMI, EU-AIMS suggests that
certain brain changes in autism may be reversible. The findings suggest that there may be
common deficits in the brains of individuals affected by many different forms of autism,
and that drugs designed to target them could halt the development of autism or even
reverse it.
A Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions funded project, PRONEURODEG, identified the
operational logic of a specific brain cell surface protein triggering inflammatory reactions
commonly leading to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. This
research could lead to the development of potential therapeutic approaches to control the
harmful inflammatory reaction. Another project, BRAINTRAIN, is mapping the interplay of
environmental factors and genetic variation in multiple genes which are thought to cause
brain disorders (dementia and major depressive disorder). One of the objectives of the
project is to design therapeutic strategies for these diseases.
At the Royal Netherlands Academy for Arts and Sciences, ERC Starting grantee Professor
Christian Keysers is shedding new light on the processes of empathy within our neurons in
the VICARIOUSBRAIN project. His study will benefit life sciences, particularly genetics, and
will inspire better therapies for psychiatric disorders of empathy such as autism. For
robotics, it will concretise a biological example of how brains process and predict actions of
others as well as read their feelings.
ERC Advanced grantee Professor Martin Schwab at the University of Zurich (Switzerland),
aims to better understand nerve-regeneration and functional recovery after injury to the
body’s central nervous system in the NOGORISE project. For these processes of repair,
the inactivation of the membrane protein Nogo-A has been increasingly recognised. Along
with his team, the researcher has found a member of a specific family of receptor
proteins, to bind with high affinity Nogo-A, facilitating nerve fibre growth and plasticity.
What is being done to
neurodegenerative diseases?
combat
Alzheimer's
and
other
Neurodegenerative diseases and cognitive decline are emerging as one of the greatest
public health challenges. It is estimated that by 2040, 14 million Europeans will be
affected by Alzheimer’s disease and that their care will cost about €140 billion per year.
The EU has invested some €400 into neurodegenerative diseases research - mostly on
Alzheimer’s (€202 million) and Parkinson’s (€167 million) but also other diseases such as
Huntington’s, ataxias, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, lysosomal storage diseases or retinal
diseases. One example is the AgedBrainSYSBIO project. Launched in Paris this March, it
aims at identifying and validating new molecular targets and biomarkers associated with
late-onset Alzheimer's, looking in particular at the systems biology of synapse proteins
and ageing. Through the €5.4 million LANIR project, University of Limerick (Ireland)
scientists are leading an 11 member European consortium developing a nanoscope which
will allow the screening of patient cells for Alzheimer’s disease.
The EU is also helping coordinate national research efforts.
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Through the European Member State-led Joint Programming Initiative on
Neurodegenerative Diseases (JPND), a total of 27 countries including some non-EU
countries, have committed some €45 million to date to neurodegenerative diseases
research on how to improve the clinical use of biomarkers; genetic, epigenetic and
environmental risk and protective factors; and evaluation of health care policies, strategies
and interventions.
The Joint Action, “Alzheimer Cooperative Valuation in Europe (ALCOVE)”, involving 19
Member States and co-financed by the EU Health Programme, this March issued a set of
recommendations covering, for example, the epidemiology of dementia, timely diagnosis,
and the management of the behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia. A
toolbox to help limit the use of anti-psychotics in dementia treatment, has also been
created.
The European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing, launched by the
Commission, also addresses Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases. The
prevention, early diagnosis and management of functional decline, both physical and
cognitive, in older people, is one of the six key areas for action within this partnership
whereby finding innovative solutions is a key component in driving this area.
What about mental disorders such as depression?
A Joint Action on mental health and well-being, co-financed under the EU Health
Programme, brings together many countries to develop an action framework for the
promotion of mental health, the prevention of mental disorders and the provision of
community-based services for people experiencing mental disorders. The European
Alliance Against Depression (EAAD) plays an important role. It has developed an approach
currently used by nearly 100 regions across the EU to improve the care for people with
depression and to prevent suicides and suicide attempts.
How does the Human Brain project fit in?
Europe's new 'Human Brain Project' aims to reconstruct the brain through supercomputerbased models and simulations not only to apply this knowledge in future medicine but also
to develop ground-breaking new computing and robotic technologies. It is part of part of
the European Commission's Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) research
programme's Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) initiative. FET's goal is to promote
long-term research and lay foundations of radically new next generation technologies.
Based on previous pioneering work by the project partners, HBP will build an integrated
system of six ICT-based research platforms, providing scientists anywhere in the world
with access to highly innovative tools and services that can radically accelerate the pace of
their research. These will include: The Neuroinformatics Platform: bringing together data
and knowledge from neuroscientists around the world and making it available to the
scientific community; The Brain Simulation Platform: integrating this information in
unifying computer models, making it possible to identify missing data, and allowing in
silico experiments, impossible in the lab; The High Performance Computing Platform:
providing the interactive supercomputing technology neuroscientists need for dataintensive modeling and simulations; The Medical Informatics Platform: federating clinical
data from around the world, providing researchers with new mathematical tools to search
for biological signatures of disease; The Neuromorphic Computing Platform: translating
brain models into a new class of hardware devices testing their applications; The
Neurorobotics Platform: allowing neuroscience and industry researchers to experiment
with virtual robots controlled by brain models developed in the project.
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What are other countries doing?
Looking beyond Europe, the EU is co-operating with the US National Institute of
Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the Canadian Institute of Health Research through
the 'International Initiative for Traumatic Brain Injury Research' (InTBIR). Launched in
2011, the initiative works on harmonised clinical guidelines and the most effective clinical
interventions for different types of brain injuries and patient histories. InTBIR is open to
funding agencies from other countries wishing to support its aims. Traumatic brain injuries
are the most important cause of disability in individuals under the age of 45 and it is
estimated that they cause costs of €33 billion per year in Europe. Canada also participates
in the EU Joint Programming Initiative on Neurodegenerative Diseases (JPND). The U.S.
recently announced the Brain Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN)
project, which aims to develop new technologies to investigate how the billions of
individual brain cells interact.
What is going to happen under Horizon 2020?
The European Commission’s Horizon 2020 proposal defines the framework for future EU
research and innovation efforts during the 2014-2020 period. Brain research will be
supported under all three pillars – 'excellent science', 'industrial leadership' and 'societal
challenges' of Horizon 2020. The 'Health, demographic change and well-being' challenge,
which will aim to improve the diagnosis, understanding and treatment of diseases, will be
particularly relevant. The Horizon 2020 negotiations between the Council and the
European Parliament can enter into their final phase once an agreement on the next Multiannual Financial Framework has been reached.
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