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The Simons Foundation has launched a 10-year, $80 million international collaboration to study how energy availability shapes brain function. ISTA professor Tim Vogels will receive $3 million to develop computational models linking cellular energy metabolism with neuronal activity and learning.
The New York-based Simons Foundation has launched an $80 million, 10-year international research collaboration to investigate how energy availability shapes brain function, including learning and behavior. The initiative includes $3 million for Tim Vogels, a professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), whose group will build computer models connecting cellular energy metabolism with neural activity.
The Simons Collaboration on Brain Energetics, known as SCOBE, brings together 26 investigators from the United States, Austria, Great Britain and Norway. It is led by Thomas Clandinin of Stanford University and will study energy use across different levels of brain organization, from individual cells to neural networks and behavior.
Vogels and his ISTA team will contribute to three of the collaboration’s four research areas. They plan to model how mitochondria—the structures that produce energy in cells—relate to the activity of neurons. The models are intended to serve as test beds for experiments 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 results gathered by collaborators, researchers aim to examine how energy demands affect learning. Another strand of the work will model how neurons and glia respond to short-term changes in energy metabolites, including during metabolic stress.
Linking Brain Energy to Learning
The collaboration addresses a basic question in neuroscience: how does the brain meet the energy costs of its activity, and what happens when supply changes? The source report describes the brain as using about 20 watts, roughly the power of a dim light bulb, while noting that scientists do not yet fully understand how energy is received, distributed and used across the brain.
Energy availability could matter during ordinary changes in demand as well as during conditions such as diabetes, reduced oxygen levels or pregnancy, which the report identifies as circumstances that can alter the energy available to the brain. Researchers will study how the brain maintains function when energy is scarce or in excess, and what occurs if protective responses fail. These are research questions, not established findings about specific conditions or outcomes.
Computational models could help researchers connect measurements from different experiments and scales. If successful, the work may provide a framework for investigating how metabolism and neural activity influence one another. The initiative also aims over time to address broader questions about information processing, developmental brain disorders and aging; those are goals, not results already demonstrated.
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Why Vogels Joined the Collaboration
Vogels is a computational neuroscientist whose earlier work included co-developing a theory of how inhibitory connections in the brain learn. More recently, his research turned to the brain’s energy budget. According to the source report, he proposed that neurons may raise their own activity to use surplus energy and protect themselves from harmful by-products associated with slow metabolism. That proposal helped lead to his group’s invitation to SCOBE; it is not presented as a settled explanation.
The initiative combines expertise in neuroscience, cellular and molecular biology, engineering and theory, and will draw on research across species and scales. The report says computational methods will help integrate different kinds of data. Hannah Bayer, a senior scientific officer in neuroscience collaborations at the Simons Foundation, said comparatively little past brain-energetics research had used theoretical or computational approaches.
“It’s a real honor to be part of this ambitious collaboration.”
— Professor Tim Vogels, Institute of Science and Technology Austria
Questions the Models Must Test
The announcement describes research plans, not findings. It does not report results showing how much energy particular mental activities require, how energy shifts affect learning, or why the brain may respond differently to scarcity and excess. Chintaluri’s question about the energy cost of memory is a research prompt, not a measured estimate.
The available report also does not specify a detailed publication schedule, intermediate milestones or how the $80 million will be divided among investigators. It gives Vogels’ award as $3 million but does not provide a breakdown of how that funding will be spent. How well the models will align with experimental data remains to be tested as the collaboration’s work proceeds.
Experiments and Models Ahead
Vogels’ group is expected to develop models of mitochondrial metabolism and neuronal activity, then work with partner teams on larger neural networks. Researchers will use experimental findings from across SCOBE to test and refine their models, including work on how energy availability relates to learning and how brain cells respond to metabolic changes.
The collaboration is planned to last 10 years. Its next substantive developments will be the research and data produced by the participating teams; the source report does not give dates for specific studies or interim results. Claims about implications for disorders, aging or other health outcomes will depend on what future experiments establish.
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 study how energy availability shapes brain function, from cells to networks and behavior.
What will Tim Vogels’ group do?
The ISTA team will develop computational models linking mitochondrial energy metabolism with neuronal activity and collaborate on models of larger neural networks. The models are intended to support and be tested against experiments by other groups.
Does the initiative show how much energy it takes to think or remember?
No. Those are questions the researchers aim to investigate. The announcement does not provide measured energy costs for thinking, memory, rest or dreaming.
Could this research lead to treatments for brain disorders?
The collaboration hopes to inform questions about developmental brain disorders and aging, but the announcement reports no treatment or clinical findings. Any medical implications remain uncertain and would require further research.
Source: news-medical.net
