Baycrest Brain Imaging Project Joins International Partners

The Virtual Brain (TVB), an open-source modelling platform that captures intricate details of the brain's structure and function through the collection of imaging data, has joined a European research enterprise to advance neuroscience, medicine, and computing.

The platform, was built by an international team of researchers at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest to help clinicians detect different types of dementia and brain diseases earlier, and give doctors the ability to test potential treatments before prescribing them to patients.

This is the Virtual Brain platform. Courtesy of Michael Burgstahler, Two Tribes.

Through TVB's international partners at the Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Berlin Institute of Health, the platform will be integrated as the core simulation tool within the Human Brain Project, a multi-billion-dollar enterprise involving more than 750 scientists in more than 20 countries. This gives the Human Brain Project researchers the ability to incorporate all their brain data into the platform and run simulations

"The Virtual Brain's involvement in this project will lead to widespread adoption of our platform among numerous researchers across Europe," says Randy McIntosh, one of TVB's co-founders, a senior scientist at Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute, and a psychology professor at the University of Toronto. "This integration will help researchers around the world better understand the brain and incurable disorders and explore the effectiveness of different diagnostic and treatment options."