TL;DR
Turn your wind-down time into listening time
- Thousands of audiobooks, podcasts and originals
- Listen on your phone, tablet or Echo — also offline
- Cancel anytime
The Simons Foundation has launched a 10-year, $80 million international collaboration to investigate how energy availability shapes brain function. ISTA professor Tim Vogels will receive $3 million to develop computational models linking cellular energy metabolism with neural activity and learning.
The New York-based Simons Foundation has launched an $80 million, 10-year research collaboration to study how energy supply shapes brain function, naming Institute of Science and Technology Austria professor Tim Vogels as a participant. Vogels will receive $3 million to develop computational models connecting cellular energy metabolism with neural activity, information processing and learning.
The initiative, called the Simons Collaboration on Brain Energetics (SCOBE), is led by Thomas Clandinin of Stanford University and brings together 26 investigators from the United States, Austria, Great Britain and Norway. Its research spans neuroscience, cell and molecular biology, engineering and theory, with investigations planned across different species and scales of brain organization.
Vogels and his research group at ISTA will contribute to three of the collaboration’s four research areas. They will build models linking the energy metabolism of mitochondria—the structures that help cells produce usable energy—to the activity of neurons. The models are intended to act as test beds for experiments conducted by other researchers in the collaboration.
The team will also work with groups at Stanford, the Allen Institute and the University of Oslo on models of larger neural networks. Using experimental findings from collaborators, researchers aim to examine how energy demands affect learning. Another strand will model how neurons and glia respond to short-term changes in energy metabolites and how the brain manages periods when energy is scarce or abundant.
How Energy Could Shape Learning
The project addresses a basic question about brain function: how the brain meets the energy costs of activity, and whether changes in supply affect what neural circuits can do. The source report says the brain operates on about 20 watts, roughly the power of a dim light bulb, but scientists do not yet fully understand how energy is received, distributed and used across the brain.
Connecting measurements of cellular metabolism with models of neural activity could help researchers test explanations that are difficult to study at just one scale. The collaboration’s longer-term aims include investigating information processing, learning, developmental brain disorders and aging. Those are research goals, not outcomes already established by the initiative.
The work may also help clarify how brain function responds to changes associated with metabolic stress, including diabetes, reduced oxygen levels and pregnancy. The announcement does not say that the research will produce treatments or clinical guidance; its immediate focus is building evidence and models to understand the mechanisms involved.
Popular right now
Ninja CREAMi 7-in-1 Ice Cream Maker, NC301
Jura E6 Automatic Espresso Machine, Piano Black (15622)
Shark Rotator Lift-Away Upright Vacuum, White/Red (NV501)
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
From Neuron Energy to Networks
Vogels is known for co-developing an early theory of how inhibitory connections in the brain learn. According to the source report, his more recent work has examined how neurons may respond to their energy budgets. One proposal is that neurons can raise their activity to use surplus energy and protect themselves from harmful by-products associated with slow metabolism. This is a research hypothesis, not a settled account of how the brain manages energy.
That work helped prompt Vogels’ invitation to join SCOBE. The collaboration is designed to bring experimental and computational approaches together, with modeling used to integrate findings across different cell types and levels of organization. The source report describes this theoretical component as an area that has received relatively little attention in past brain-energetics research.
The initiative will study how energy supply and demand relate both to ongoing activity and to lower-activity states. Researchers have posed questions about the energy costs of memory, thinking, rest and dreaming. The report presents these as questions the teams hope to investigate, rather than findings already reached.
“It’s a real honor to be part of this ambitious collaboration. By contributing our expertise in computational neuroscience, my ISTA research group and I hope to tackle some of the big unanswered questions about the brain and gain a better understanding of how energy shapes the way it works, learns, and adapts.”
— Professor Tim Vogels, Institute of Science and Technology Austria
Questions the Models Must Test
The initiative’s launch does not establish how the brain distributes energy, how strongly energy availability shapes learning, or what the relevant mechanisms are across different cell types. These remain research questions. The models will depend on experimental results from participating groups, and the report gives no findings from the newly launched collaboration.
It is also unclear from the source material how the $80 million total will be allocated among investigators and research areas, what specific milestones the teams will use, or when initial results are expected. The report does not identify a publication schedule or describe any clinical studies.
A Decade of Linked Research
Over the planned 10-year period, Vogels’ group is expected to develop models that connect mitochondrial metabolism to neuronal activity, then extend its work to larger networks and energy responses under changing conditions. The researchers will draw on experimental data gathered across SCOBE to test and refine those models.
The next concrete developments will be the research outputs themselves: experimental findings, model development and any publications or updates from the participating institutions and the Simons Foundation. The source report does not provide dates for those milestones, so the timing of the first results remains unknown.
Key Questions
What is the Simons Collaboration on Brain Energetics?
SCOBE is a 10-year, $80 million international research initiative launched by the Simons Foundation to investigate how energy availability affects brain function.
What will Tim Vogels’ group study?
The ISTA team will develop computational models linking mitochondrial energy metabolism with neuronal activity, and later model larger neural networks and how energy supply and demand relate to brain function.
How many researchers are involved?
The initiative brings together 26 investigators from the United States, Austria, Great Britain and Norway, according to the source report.
Does the initiative already show that energy changes affect learning?
No. The collaboration is intended to investigate that question. The announcement describes research aims and planned modeling, not results demonstrating a specific effect on learning.
When will the first findings be available?
The source report does not give a publication timetable or a date for initial results. It describes the collaboration as a 10-year effort.
Source: news-medical.net
