CNS*2025 Florence

Exploring Open Brain Platform: A Collaborative Platform for Computational Neuroscience, from single cells to circuits

Open Brain Institute

Brief Description
Computational neuroscience increasingly relies on open-access data, tools, and workflows to build,
simulate, and analyze brain models. The Open Brain Institute (OBI) offers a state-of-the-art platform
(https://www.openbraininstitute.org) that provides a collaborative environment to drive scientific
discovery, enabling researchers to work together seamlessly across disciplines. OBI streamlines
computational neuroscience research by enabling standardized experiments within a controlled and
consistent cloud-based infrastructure, fostering reproducibility and efficiency across the community.
This tutorial will provide participants with a hands-on introduction to the core functionalities of the
Open Brain Platform (OBP), including the exploration and analysis of single-cell morphological and
electrophysiological datasets, the construction of biophysically detailed neuron models, and the
simulation and analysis of small neural circuits. Attendees will gain practical experience navigating
OBP’s diverse features at both the single-cell and network levels, through powerful computational
tools to accelerate their research through standardized and reproducible workflows. Finally, we will
highlight the platform’s expanding capabilities, including region-to-region brain interactions, AI-driven
discovery for collaborative exploration, and the potential to accelerate breakthroughs in computational
neuroscience.

Detailed program

9:00–9:10 Exploration of the Open Brain Platform (Lida Kanari)
9:10–9:55 What makes human brains unique? Interactive topological analysis of neuronal morphologies (Lida Kanari)
9:55–10:10 Introduction and interactive demonstration to Single Cell Biophysical Modeling (Darshan Mandge)
Coffee break
10:40–11:10 The Age of Biophysics and Connectomics (Idan Segev)
11:10–11:40 From Spines to Synapses: Simulating the First Full EM Neuron in the Open Brain Platform (Sapir Shapira)
11:40–11:50 Inside Human Wiring Networks: Analyzing the Harvard EM Connectome (Lida Kanari)
11:50–12:20 Interactive Demonstration: Investigating Proximal vs. Distal Dendritic Inhibition using the Open Brain Platform (Darshan Mandge)
Lunch break
14:00–14:30 General Biophysically-detailed Brain Models: predictions in cortical plasticity, neural coding, and spike sorting in a single model (James Isbister)
14:30–15:00 Modeling Human Cortical Microcircuits in Depression and Aging (Alexandre Guet-McCreight)
15:00–15:40 Interactive demonstration: Analysis and simulation of atlas-based cortical and hippocampal circuits on the Open Brain Platform (James Isbister and Armando Romani)
Coffee break
16:00 Discussion

List of speakers

Alexandre Guet-McCreight, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics, CAMH
James Isbister, Scientist, Open Brain Institute, Lausanne, Switzerland
Lida Kanari, Early-Career Investigator, EPFL, Open Brain Institute, Lausanne, Switzerland
Darshan Mandge, Scientist, Open Brain Institute, Lausanne, Switzerland
Armando Romani, Early-Career Investigator, Open Brain Institute, Lausanne, Switzerland
Idan Segev, Professor, The Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
Sapir Shapira, PhD Student, Hebrew University, Edmond J. Safra Campus, Jerusalem, Israel

Requirements to attend

Please bring your laptop! 

Related publications 

Kanari et al. 2024
Reimann et al. 2024
Isbister et al. 2023