Innovative and bold new projects winning the fourth edition of the Big Brain Theory (BBT4) programme.

In 2024, the Brain Institute launches the fourth edition of the Big Brain Theory (BBT) program, which aims to fund disruptive projects aimed at responding to grand challenges in neuroscience. For the first time, the call for tenders has been opened for researchers from our international partners.

Established in 2016 by the Brain Institute, the BBT program funds innovative, multidisciplinary, high-risk projects led by different internal research teams. After the success of three editions that enabled the funding of 33 research projects, the Brain Institute opened this fourth transfer to international partners:Montreal Hospital Neurological Institute (nervous),Pastor Institute A consortium of four Belgian institutes (Mission clarity :VIB, KU Leuven, UZ Leuven and EMIC). This opening aims to strengthen cooperation between the best experts from all over the world.

This first international BBT reflects the Brain Institute's commitment to strengthening relationships with major foreign research centers and developing international collaborative projects to accelerate brain research and combat neurological diseases.

Thinking about neuroscience differently

The BBT programme aims to engage researchers in interdisciplinary collaborations in order to expand the impact of their research and encourage pioneering projects with high discovery potential in all areas of neuroscience.

Collaborators are expected to combine their expertise in innovative ways to address important unsolved problems and/or methodological and/or technological bottlenecks in basic and/or clinical neuroscience.

Selected projects have been selected by the Brain Institute's international Scientific Board (SAB) and explore original ideas and bold hypotheses from their earliest stages. The BBT program aims to provide seed funding for these projects until they obtain initial proofs of concept, which will allow them to obtain institutional funding to ultimately revolutionize therapeutic approaches to CNS diseases.

New collaborative projects

The close relationships developed with our renowned partners have given rise to innovative ideas to address current challenges in neuroscience. The first funded collaborative project between France and Belgium focuses on the mechanisms of synaptogenesis and its impact on the assembly and plasticity of brain circuits. It is coordinated by Bassem Hassan (INSERM researcher) and Pierre Vanderhaeggen (VIB-KU Leuven) and is generously funded by one of the Brain Institute's donors – the Fondation Marie-Françoise Barrier-Chaufour.

This year, the Brain Institute, the Neurological Institute and the Pasteur Institute are collaborating to encourage international scientific innovation, by funding two innovative collaborative projects:

• The project ” Deciphering the molecular drivers of microglia-associated glioblastoma, due to the overall hormonal environment » In coordination with Ahmed Edbih (Sorbonne University, AP-HP), Maite Ferro (Institut Cervo), Stefano Stefani (Neurological), and Philippe Bosso (Institut Pasteur) aims to understand how hormones affect the behavior and properties of cells and glial cells in glioblastoma.
• The project ” Development and development of key brain regions involved in social relationships “coordinated by Julia Sliwa (CNRS, Institute du Cerveau), Justine Cléry (The Neuro), and Roberto Toro (Institut Pasteur) to review the comments on the neuron circuits affected by superior social networks that allow adapting adapters to the association.

These projects are funded thanks to the generosity of donors from the Institute of Nerve and Brain (RMF) and funds from the Institut Pasteur.

In order to encourage innovative, cross-disciplinary projects among its research teams, the Brain Institute will fund five collaborative projects between the teams:

– The project ” Multimodal neuroimaging of visual mental imagination in waking and sleeping states » This research, coordinated by Paolo Bartolomeo (INSERM researcher) and Delphine Audit (INSERM researcher), aims to identify the cortical networks responsible for mental images during wakefulness and the onset of sleep, in addition to their temporal dynamics.

– The project ” Brain specialization for words and numbers: a high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging study. » In coordination with Laurent Cohen (Sorbonne University, AP-HP) and Stephane Lehricy (Sorbonne University, AP-HP) it aims to study the specialization of brain regions in learning words and numbers, and to understand the role of long-distance communication in nature and the origin of this specialization.

– The project ” The effect of metabolic stress on the clinical course of hereditary spastic hemiplegia SPG4″ Daphne Hadjikonomou (Brain Institute) and Frédéric Darius (INSERM) will evaluate whether metabolic changes imposed by the environment could be a modifying factor in the development of hereditary spastic paraplegia SPG4.

– The project ” The placebo effect gives you wings: a study of phenotypic plasticity of placebo effects in flies » In coordination with Liane Schmidt (INSERM) and Bassem Hassan (INSERM) they will explore the effects of placebo in a fruit fly model of Parkinson's disease.

– The project ” Studying the neural mechanisms across species for the treatment of traumatic brain injury » In coordination with Jacopo Sette (INSERM) and Claire Wiart (INSERM) he proposes to study the pathophysiology of traumatic brain injury in an experimental, preclinical model.

The five projects are funded by the University Hospital Institute (IHU) Brain Institute