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Section: Partnerships and Cooperations
European Initiatives
FP7 & H2020 Projects
HBP
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Understanding the human brain is one of the greatest challenges facing 21st century science. If we can rise to the challenge, we can gain profound insights into what makes us human, develop new treatments for brain diseases and build revolutionary new computing technologies. Today, for the first time, modern ICT has brought these goals within sight. The goal of the Human Brain Project, part of the FET Flagship Programme, is to translate this vision into reality, using ICT as a catalyst for a global collaborative effort to understand the human brain and its diseases and ultimately to emulate its computational capabilities. The Human Brain Project will last ten years and will consist of a ramp-up phase (from month 1 to month 36) and subsequent operational phases. This Grant Agreement covers the ramp-up phase. During this phase the strategic goals of the project will be to design, develop and deploy the first versions of six ICT platforms dedicated to Neuroinformatics, Brain Simulation, High Performance Computing, Medical Informatics, Neuromorphic Computing and Neurorobotics, and create a user community of research groups from within and outside the HBP, set up a European Institute for Theoretical Neuroscience, complete a set of pilot projects providing a first demonstration of the scientific value of the platforms and the Institute, develop the scientific and technological capabilities required by future versions of the platforms, implement a policy of Responsible Innovation, and a programme of transdisciplinary education, and develop a framework for collaboration that links the partners under strong scientific leadership and professional project management, providing a coherent European approach and ensuring effective alignment of regional, national and European research and programmes. The project work plan is organized in the form of thirteen subprojects, each dedicated to a specific area of activity. A significant part of the budget will be used for competitive calls to complement the collective skills of the Consortium with additional expertise.
Collaborations in European Programs, Except FP7 & H2020
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Abstract: There is an increasing concern about statistical power in neuroscience research. Critically, an underpowered study has poor predictive power. Findings from a low-power study are unlikely to be reproducible, and thus a power analysis is a critical component of any paper. This project aims to promote and facilitate the use of power analyses.A key component of a power analysis is the specification of an effect size. However, in neuroimaging, there is no standardised way to communicate effect sizes, which makes the choice of an appropriate effect size a formidable task. The best way today to perform a power analysis is by collecting a pilot data set, a very expensive practice. To eliminate the need for pilot data, we will develop a standardised measure of effect size taking into account the spatial variance and the uncertainty of the measurements. Communicating effect sizes in new publications will facilitate the use of power analyses.To further alleviate the need for pilot data, we will provide a library of effect sizes for different tasks and contrasts, using open data projects in neuroimaging. We will integrate our effect size estimator in open repositories NeuroVault and OpenfMRI. Consequently, these effect sizes can then serve as a proxy for a pilot study, and as such, a huge cost in the design of an experiment is eliminated.A new experiment will not be identical to the open data and as such the hypothesised parameters might not be fully accurate. To address this issue, we present a flexible framework to analyse data mid-way without harming the control of the type I error rate. Such a procedure will allow re-evaluating halfway an experiment whether it is useful to continue a study, and how many more subjects are needed for statistically sound inferences.To make our methods maximally available, we will write a software suite including all these methods in different programming platforms and we will provide a GUI to further increase the use of power analyses.