We all have a brain, and we all use it. But the human brain remains an absolute mystery to most people – and a huge challenge even for researchers. To overcome this challenge, brain research has completely reinvented itself with the help of digitization. A success that would not have been possible without Jülich.
Professor Katharina Amunts has always been fascinated by the brain. “It is one of the most complex systems ever created, comparable to the universe,” says the INM-1 director, who devoted herself to the subject of the brain early in her medical studies. “Not only does it contain around 86 billion neurons, but it also has an almost unimaginable number of connections and different states that it can assume*.” Amunts recalls: “Brain research at that time was completely different from today.” In 1999, she joined Professor Karl Zilis at FZJ as a postdoctoral researcher to help define the research topic here. She had just spent four years creating new maps of two brain regions at the language centre. “But the language network in the brain is much larger,” says Amunts. “To make real progress, I actually had to know the whole brain in addition to these two brain regions. However, this was not possible with the state of technology at the time and the complex mapping process.”
* It is estimated that there are 2^10^15 theoretical states possible in the human brain at any given time. This is equivalent to a number with about one-third of a quadrillion zeros.
Leap into the modern age
Today, 25 years later, brain research has come a long way: “We already know many of the networks that are crucial to our thinking and behavior. There are highly accurate 3D maps of more than 200 brain regions – and within a few years we will cover the entire brain,” Amunts is pleased to announce. “Most of these regions have been imaged for the first time ever in Jülich.” But where did this huge leap in knowledge come from? The answer is digitization. The 3D digital brain atlas, which Amunts developed in Jülich over two decades, has made possible many things that previously seemed completely unimaginable: “The Jülich brain atlas was the first to combine a wide range of high-resolution 3D brain maps with countless interactive tools and functions.”
The Amunts atlas formed the core of the European digital infrastructure EBRAINS, which researchers worldwide have been able to use since January 2024. Imaging technologies and, increasingly, artificial intelligence have been key to the digital revolution in brain research. “Our work requires images and maps of the brain that are as accurate as possible.” Since 1999, Amunts and Ziels have used imaging and statistical methods to create microscopic maps and have contributed probability maps to an international consortium for human brain mapping. “This was the first step towards a new digital age.”
Difficult beginnings
But as image files grew larger, data volumes grew and computers reached their limits. Then the Jülich Institute of Internal Medicine first ventured into supercomputing in 2011 with the BigBrain project. “This interdisciplinary collaboration was still very new in our research field at the time,” recalls Amunts. In 2012, she teamed up with JSC Director Professor Thomas Lippert and Professor Markus Duesmann from what is now IAS-6. To bring neuroscience and supercomputing closer together, they launched the critical Helmholtz project** in 2013. This was followed by the Simulation and Data Lab (SDL), which served as an important interface. “All of this helped bring brain research problems to large computers,” says Amunts. “Because suddenly we had to take a completely different approach. It was pioneering work that was difficult for both sides. But looking back, it helped usher in a new era at Jülich.”
** The Helmholtz project “Supercomputing and Modeling of the Human Brain” was later developed as a joint laboratory.
Timing is everything!
It was no coincidence that the NIH and the CNRS, and thus neuroscience and computing, were brought together at this time: “It was important in order to have a chance in the rigorous selection process for the two flagship EU projects planned at the time, with unprecedented amounts of funding,” recalls Amunts. The effort was successful, with the Human Brain Project (HBP), eventually worth more than €600 million, launched in 2013. The timing was crucial at the time: “Neuroscience was advanced enough to start bringing together the different levels of brain organization: from molecules, individual cells and microcircuits to large networks and brain regions,” says Amunts. “But supercomputing also had a long way to go to be able to handle huge data sets and very complex tasks.”
New generation
The HBP project was a great opportunity for European brain research, says Amunts. “The brain is so complex that until then research on it had been spread across many subdisciplines. Whether it was brain research, medicine, robotics or psychology, in the HBP project we systematically brought together for the first time across Europe the most diverse worlds and combined them with computing. In this way we learned to discuss and work together over ten years. Because in the end no one can do everything alone, but by working together we can all do more.”
This steadily increasing international collaboration beyond specialized disciplines is one of the greatest successes of the EU project, which was completed in 2023, Amunts believes. “It has also made it possible to train a new generation of researchers who work specifically at these interfaces between neuroscience, medicine, computing and technology.” Perhaps the most visible success, however, is the digital brain research itself: “We continue to push this forward in the new EU project EBRAINS 2.0, with AI becoming increasingly important in this field,” says Amunts. “Digitalization will continue to open many new doors in brain research in the future.”
“The step from a small computer to a very large computing machine was a huge step for us – like driving a small car for years and then suddenly being put in a Formula 1 car.” – Professor Catherine Amunts (INM-1)
Originally published in the staff magazine “The Apprentice” of the Forschungszentrum Jülich.
Author: Hanno Schaefer
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- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine
- Structural and functional organization of the brain (INM-1)
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