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 research collaboration studying how energy availability shapes brain function. ISTA computational neuroscientist Tim Vogels will receive $3 million to develop models linking cellular energy metabolism with neuronal activity and learning.
The Simons Foundation has launched an $80 million, 10-year international research initiative to investigate how energy availability affects brain function, with Institute of Science and Technology Austria professor Tim Vogels receiving $3 million for computational neuroscience research. The collaboration will study connections between energy use in brain cells and processes such as information processing, learning and behavior.
The Simons Collaboration on Brain Energetics, or SCOBE, brings together 26 investigators from the United States, Austria, Great Britain and Norway. It is led by Thomas Clandinin of Stanford University. The research is intended to examine brain energetics across scales, from individual cells to neural networks and behavior, drawing on neuroscience, cellular and molecular biology, engineering and theory.
Vogels and his group at ISTA will develop computational models connecting mitochondrial energy metabolism with neuronal activity. Mitochondria supply energy within cells. The models are intended to help test ideas against experiments conducted by other teams in the collaboration. Vogels’ group will contribute to three of the initiative’s four research areas, according to the report.
The team will also work with researchers at Stanford, the Allen Institute and the University of Oslo on models of larger networks of neurons. Using experimental findings from the collaboration, they will investigate how energy demands relate to learning. Another strand will model how neurons and glia respond to short-term changes in energy metabolites, including conditions in which energy supply is limited or excessive.
How Energy Could Shape Learning
The initiative addresses an open question about how the brain sustains its work: how energy supply and demand interact with neural activity. The 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 it receives, distributes and uses that energy. That figure is an estimate of power use, not a measure of the energy cost of a particular thought or memory.
If the collaboration can connect cellular energy processes to activity across neural networks, its findings could help researchers explain how the brain manages periods of high demand and rest, and how energy conditions affect learning. The initiative also identifies developmental brain disorders and aging as longer-term areas where a better understanding of brain energetics could be relevant. Those are research aims, not established outcomes of the project.
Computational models may help researchers compare findings across experimental approaches and scales. Their value will depend on whether they fit observed biological data and produce predictions that experiments can test. The project is designed to combine theory with work by experimental teams rather than treat models alone as evidence.
Popular right now
Dyson V8 Cyclone Cordless Vacuum
LG 85-Inch QNED84B Mini LED 4K Smart TV (2026)
Dyson Ball Animal 3 Upright Vacuum
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
From Neuron Models to Brain Energetics
Vogels is known for co-developing an early theory of how inhibitory connections in the brain learn. More recently, his research has focused on how neurons use energy. The report describes a proposal from Vogels that neurons may increase their own activity to burn surplus energy and protect themselves from harmful by-products associated with slow metabolism. This is a research hypothesis, not a settled account of how neurons regulate energy.
SCOBE builds on that expertise by bringing computational neuroscience into a collaboration spanning different species and levels of study. Researchers will consider changing energy conditions such as metabolic stress, reduced oxygen levels, diabetes and pregnancy. The supplied report describes these as circumstances that can affect the amount of energy available to the brain; it does not report findings about their effects from this new collaboration.
“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.”
— Tim Vogels, professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria
Questions the Models Must Test
The announcement sets out a research program, not results. It remains unclear how much energy specific brain processes use, how energy availability affects learning, and how reliably researchers can connect changes inside cells to larger networks and behavior. The report does not provide a detailed project-by-project schedule or specify when experimental results are expected.
The proposed protective response in which neurons raise activity to use surplus energy also remains a hypothesis to investigate. Likewise, the possible relevance of the work to developmental disorders and aging is a long-term research goal; the source does not claim that the collaboration will produce treatments or direct clinical applications.
A Decade of Collaborative Research
Over the planned 10-year period, Vogels’ group is expected to develop models that can be compared with experimental data generated by other SCOBE researchers. The collaboration’s work will span cell metabolism, neural activity, larger networks and behavior, with computational approaches intended to link findings across those areas.
The next substantive milestones will be the development and testing of the models and the publication of research findings. The source material does not give dates for those milestones, so the timing of early results is not yet clear.
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. It brings together 26 investigators across four countries.
What will Tim Vogels and his team do?
The ISTA group will develop computational models linking mitochondrial energy metabolism with neuronal activity, then work with partner groups on models of larger neural networks and energy demands related to learning.
Does the initiative have findings about brain energy yet?
No findings from the new collaboration are reported. The announcement describes planned research questions and methods, including models that will need to be tested against experimental data.
Could the research lead to treatments for brain disorders?
The collaboration hopes its work may help researchers understand the origins of developmental brain disorders and aspects of aging. The announcement does not report a treatment or promise a clinical application.
Source: news-medical.net
