Since 2011, the NORBRAIN project, or the Norwegian Brain Initiative, has given Norwegian scientists access to ground-breaking, advanced and costly equipment designed for brain research. The Research Council of Norway has recently granted 80.3 million kroners to NORBRAIN4. The grant will go towards the further development and renewal of technical equipment at NTNU, UiO and UiB and also the establishment of a Norwegian unit affiliated to the European digital research infrastructure EBRAINS.
Trygve Leergaard and Clive Bramham each lead their own hub within this infrastructure project at UiO and UiB respectively. Moser’s hub consists primarily of the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience.
NORBRAIN4 will build a bridge between medical theory and clinical practice
- This grant is great news and very important to us. It makes it possible for us to continue our participation in the development of the European research infrastructure EBRAINS. It also provides Norwegian brain scientists with new resources for data sharing and analyses via EBRAINS. In addition, the grant will facilitate crucial upgrades in the advanced equipment that our brain scientists need in order to be internationally competitive, says Trygve Leergaard, professor at the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences. The new infrastructure will be available for Norwegian brain scientists during the period 2025-2027, he adds.
NORBRAIN4 will strengthen both groundbreaking basic research and links to clinical research by means of the following investments:
• The further development of advanced equipment for registering brain activity in freely moving mice
• Investment in advanced MRI equipment at NTNU
• Purchase of equipment to be used for the advanced registering of brain activity during surgery on patients at UiO and Oslo University Hospital
• The design of methods for analysing complex, spatial gene expression patterns in brain tissue from patients at the University Hospital of Bergen
The project will enhance our understanding of brain diseases
Professor Clive Bramham at the Institute of Biomedicine in Bergen further explains the significance of the project for research into brain diseases:
- The national NORBRAIN4 infrastructure is vital for establishing and sharing advanced methods for understanding how the brain works, for detecting disease and for developing new treatments. This infrastructure enables us to carry out analyses at different levels, from molecules and single cells to networks of neural cells in animals and humans. NORBRAIN4 focuses in particular on the human brain and its diseases and on the establishment of a national platform for the collation and integration of data across the various levels of the brain. At the UiB hub, we will establish spatial transcriptomics, which is used to image changes in gene expression in brain tissue. This will allow us to better understand the mechanisms of disease in neurodegenerative disorders.
Norway is at the forefront of brain research
NORBRAIN is a national research infrastructure that was started up in 2011 and has received funding during three previous phases. UiB is the most recent addition to the national hub and has participated since NORBRAIN3, in other words since 2019.
- I am very grateful for this grant from the Research Council of Norway, because continuity is so important in our work, emphasizes Bramham.
Neuroscience is one of the few fields of research where Norway is at the forefront and is playing a key role in a knowledge revolution. The field is rapidly developing.
- This development goes hand in hand with the discovery of ever new forms of technology for examining the brain. If we are to maintain Norway’s position as a leader in neuroscience, we need to ensure that our researchers have access to these new technologies as and when they come onto the market, comments Leergaard.
Moser emphasizes the need for the best technology
- The NORBRAIN4 funding is important because we are entirely dependent on up-to-date infrastructure, and developments in this field are progressing at enormous speed. We need state-of-the-art technology and it is a prerequisite that what we buy will benefit many people, emphasizes professor Edvard Moser.
New investments are necessary so that Norwegian neuroscientists will be able to continue to break new ground and translate their findings into new forms of treatment. NORBRAIN4 will allow us to invest in the technology of the future so that we can study network coding in complex healthy and diseased brain systems at significantly greater scale and resolution.
- This grant will ensure that our work can continue for at least three to four more years, concludes Edvard Moser.