ESF Strategic Report and its Conclusions The Human Brain From Cells to Society Towards Better Mental Health in Europe Presenter: Professor, Ph.D., Daniel David ESF Steering Committee for the Strategic Report Babes-Bolyai University, Romania (professor) Mount Sinai School of Medicine, USA (adjunct professor)
The Human Brain From Cells to Society The European Science Foundation (ESF) strategic initiative The Human Brain: from Cells to Society aims to enable Europe s scientific community, in interaction with policy makers, to develop medium to long-term views and an analysis of future research developments with the aim of defining research agendas at national and European level Five Standing Committees of the European Science Foundation participated in the process: European Medical Research Councils Standing Committee for Life, Earth, and Environmental Sciences Standing Committee for the Physical and Engineering Sciences Standing Committee for the Humanities Standing Committee for the Social Sciences Experts meeting, 14-15 December 2011, at the Hanack-Haus, Berlin, Germany More info about the editors, contributors, and the full text can be found at: www.esf.org/humanbrain
The Human Brain From Cells to Society Levels of organisation levels of understanding The levels should be understood in terms of functional hierarchy
The Human Brain From Cells to Society Expanding Views of Development and Plasticity From Innate versus Acquired To Gene- Environment continuing interactions Maturation Epigenetic Evolutionary models From Windows of Opportunities (i.e., critical periods) To Wider View of Plasticity Longitudinal developmental studies
The Human Brain From Cells to Society Translating Knowledge into Practice treatment and prevention of brain disorders From biological versus psychological models To biological and psychological models Psychotherapy and Pharmacotherapy» Independent» Combined» Adjunctive» Interactions Clinical trials From fundamental research [i.e., neurobiological analyses (e.g. MRI, molecular biology), animal models, stem cells research] To clinical applications Translational research From clinical practice to population Accessibility and cost-effectiveness research The case of depression!
The Human Brain From Cells to Society Towards a Brain-aware Society dealing with implications of advances in the brain sciences Biomarkers Diagnosis Predicting the risk (screening) and/or the evolution of disease Discrimination and stigma» Predisposition to social delinquency Social responsibility» Predisposition to violence Dealing with new technologies Neurorobotics and Neurostimulation Information read from the brain Information written back into the brain Ethical and legal issues» Private versus Public Information Paradigms of understanding Positivism (what the cause of a phenomenon is) Hermeneutics (what we think that the cause of a phenomenon is) Phenomenology (how we came to think that something is the cause of a phenomenon) Neuroscience is often positivistic; thus it may not cover the whole story! Multidisciplinary versus Interdisciplinary versus Transdisciplinary Research
The Human Brain From Cells to Society The Report highlights five key direction for advancing our knowledge of the human brain: the development of integrated neuro-psychotherapeutic approaches to the treatment of psychiatric disorders; the development of more valid disease models for research into psychiatric disorders; an improved understanding of the underlying mechanisms of the relationship between biology and environment; more comparative and cross-disciplinary studies to explore how scientific concepts relating to the human brain are received and understood in different sociocultural contexts; research into the legal and ethical implications of recent developments in the brain sciences, including behavioural screening and manipulation, and emerging neurotechnologies (see ESF: www.esf.org/humanbrain)
ESF past, current and future activities related to neuroscience
Research Networking Programmes European Research Network for Investigating Human Sensorimotor Function in Health and Disease (2006-2009) European Neuroscience and Society Network (2007-2012) Evolution of Social Cognition: comparisons and integration across a wide range of human and non-human animal species (2008-2013) European Social Cognition Network 2 (2009-2014) Experimental Pragmatics in Europe (2009-2013) Research Networking Programmes are networking platforms for nationally funded research groups to meet and discuss major scientific and research infrastructure issues with the goal to advance the frontiers of science which require transnational collaboration. ESF past, current and future activities related to neuroscience
EUROCORES Programmes Consciousness in a Natural and Cultural Context (2006-2009) Modelling Intelligent Interaction. Logic in the Humanities, Social and Computational Sciences (2008-2011) Stress and Mental Health (2008-2011) Understanding and Misunderstanding Cognition, Communication and Culture (2011-2014) Functional Genomic Variation in the Epilepsies (2011-2014) The European Collaborative Research (EUROCORES) scheme was established to enable researchers in different European countries to develop collaboration and scientific synergy in areas where international scale and scope are required for top class science in a global context. ESF past, current and future activities related to neuroscience
European Collaborative Research Projects Decision Making: Exploiting Bounded Rationality (2006-2009) Eye-Movement Control in Reading: basic and applied issues of fixation and saccade generation (2006-2009) The Short- and Long-Range Dynamics of Attention (2007-2010) The Social Dimension of Emotion Regulation: brain, mind and behaviour (2009-2012) Intentional Inhibition of Human Action (2010-2013) Optimising the Detection of Criminal Intent and Deception among Criminal Networks (2010-2013) The European Collaborative Research Projects (ECRP) scheme was established to promote investigator-driven, multinational collaborative research in the social sciences in Europe and beyond. ESF past, current and future activities related to neuroscience
Events Exploratory Workshops Multilingualism from an Interdisciplinary Perspective (Oct 2007) Models of Language Evolution, Acquisition and Processing (Nov 2007) Sign Language vs. Gesture: where is the boundary and how can we know more? (Dec 2007) Mirror Neurons and Social Cognition (Sept 2008) Modularity for Versatile Motor Learning: from neuroscience to robotics and back (April 2009) The Dreaming Mind-Brain, Consciousness and Psychosis: bridging the gap from the phenomenology of mentation to neurones (May 2009) Social, Cognitive and Affective Dimensions of Collaborative Learning Interactions: towards an integrated analysis (May 2009) The Communication of Deaf-blind People as a Model for Exploring Language Modality, Social Communication and Neural Plasticity (May 2009) Music and the Brain: new perspectives for stimulating cognitive and sensory processes (July 2009) Neuroesthetics: when art and the brain collide (Sept 2009) ESF past, current and future activities related to neuroscience
Events Exploratory Workshops Words in Action: interdisciplinary approaches to understanding word processing and storage (Sept 2009) The Adolescent Brain. New Insights from Clinical and Animal Models (Oct 2009) Qualities in Perception Science (Nov 2009) Multidisciplinary Workshop on Suffering (Nov 2009) Brains4Brain Treating Pediatric Neurodegenerative Diseases (March 2010) Exploring the Roots of Linguistic Diversity: biolinguistic perspectives (Sept 2010) Cognitive Basis of Understanding Social Relations: developmental, comparative and evolutionary approaches (June 2011) Nonverbal Intentions: the emergence of the emotional embodied mind (Sept 2011) Noise in Decision-making: theory meets experiment (June 2013) These small, interactive output-orientated meetings are aimed at opening up new directions in research to explore emerging research fields with potential impact on new developments in science. ESF past, current and future activities related to neuroscience
Events Research Conferences ESF-JSPS Frontier Science Conference for Young Researchers on Robotics: experimental cognitive robotics (March 2008) ESF/JSPS Conference on Social Cognitive Neuroscience (Feb 2009) ESF/COST Conference on Law and Neuroscience: our growing understanding of the human brain and its impact on our legal system (Oct 2009) ESF-EMBO Symposium on Functional Neurobiology in Minibrains: from flies to robots and back again (Oct 2010) ESF-FENS Stresa Conferences in Neurobiology, The Neurobiology of Emotion (Nov 2012) ESF-FENS Stresa Conferences in Neurobiology, Neurobiology of Synapses and their Dysfunction (Oct 2013) ESF-FENS Stresa Conferences in Neurobiology, Neurobiology of Action (Oct 2013) The ESF Research Conferences Scheme provides the opportunity for leading scientists and young researchers to meet for discussions on the most recent developments in their fields of research. It acts as a catalyst for creating new synergistic contacts throughout Europe and the rest of the world. ESF past, current and future activities related to neuroscience
Miscellaneous European Latsis Prize 2009: The Human Brain The Human Mind NSF/ESF Workshop Informatics for Bioinspired Design: Reverse Engineering of the Human Brain (May 2010) ESF-EMRC position paper on the Implications of the EMF Directive 2004/40/ EC for European Biomedical Magnetic Resonance Research (2010) Cross-committee strategic initiative The Neurochemical Self. Emerging Research on the Crossroad of Biomedical Neurosciences, Social Sciences and the Humanities (2010-2011) Session at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Thinking about Thinking: How do we know what we know? (Feb 2011) Strategic workshop Naturalistic Approaches to Culture? (Sept 2011) Strategic workshop report The Human Brain From Cells to Society: towards better mental health in Europe (2012) Strategic workshop The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: collaboration practices between the social sciences and the life sciences (March 2012) ESF past, current and future activities related to neuroscience