Past events

BIONNALE is the largest networking event for life sciences and healthcare industries in the German capital region.
Representatives from academia and industry attend the annual life sciences event in Berlin to identify, engage and start strategic relationships. The networking character is one strength of BIONNALE with more than 1500 attendees from over 45 countries in 2023. Be part of BIONNALE 2025 and use informative talks and new contacts for your business. We look forward to meeting you online or in Berlin!

Technologiefolgenabschätzung in Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft

Bei technischen Innovationen werden immer wieder Stimmen laut, die vor den Geistern warnen, die dadurch gerufen wurden: Atomenergie, Verbrennungstechnologie, chemische Prozesse, Künstliche Intelligenz. In der interdisziplinären Vorlesungsreihe werden die Chancen und Grenzen des technologischen Fortschritts aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven der akademischen Fachdisziplinen beleuchtet. Die alles verbindende Frage lautet: Darf der Mensch alles, was er kann? Dabei geht es nicht nur um frappierende Entdeckungen, die zugleich erheblichen Schaden mit sich brachten, sondern auch um fortschrittliche Technik zu Hause und im Alltag. Expertinnen und Experten bringen Perspektiven ein aus Philosophie, Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft, aus technischen Disziplinen, Wirtschaft und Medizin.

The BrainNet workshop promotes a multidisciplinary approach to the study of the brain, covering a wide range of topics that elucidate its complex mechanisms and functions. The event brings together distinguished scientists from leading institutions across Europe who investigate the brain using methods from fields such as Statistics, Complex Networks, Dynamical Systems, Topology, Machine Learning, or a combination of these. By integrating diverse perspectives and cutting-edge research, the workshop aims to advance our understanding of brain function while fostering innovation and collaboration within the scientific community. Participants will have the opportunity to engage with the latest findings, discuss emerging trends, and explore the ethical and practical considerations of brain research.

For decades dynamical systems theory played a pivotal role in theoretical and computational neuroscience, as it links biophysical and biochemical processes to neural computation. In fact, dynamical systems are computationally universal. Rather than hand-crafting computational theories of neural function based on dynamical systems, recent developments in scientific machine learning (ML) and AI suggest that we may be able to infer such dynamical-computational models directly from neurophysiological and behavioral observations. This is called dynamical systems reconstruction (DSR), the learning of generative surrogate models of the underlying dynamics, including its long-term temporal and geometrical properties, from time series data. In my talk I will cover recent ML/AI architectures, training algorithms, and validation procedures for DSR. I will discuss specifically how recent AI architectures for DSR can integrate neuroscience data from multiple modalities (like multiple single-unit recordings and behavioral choices), across diverse time scales, and across many different animals and task designs, into a joint DSR model. This provides first steps toward dynamical systems based AI foundation models for neuroscience.

Launched as the World Wide Theoretical Neuroscience Seminar (WWTNS) in November 2020 and renamed in homage to Carl van Vreeswijk in Memoriam (April 20, 2022), speakers have the occasion to talk about theoretical aspects of their work which cannot be discussed in a setting where the majority of the audience consists of experimentalists. The seminars, held on Wednesdays at 11 am ET, are 45-50 min long followed by a discussion.

Europas erstes Event zu Neuroadaptiver Künstlicher Intelligenz

Vom 8. bis 10. April 2025 findet im ABION Spreebogen Hotel in Berlin die NAT’25 Konferenz mit dem Thema "Towards Neuroadaptive Artificial Intelligence" statt. Dort kommt auch das brAIn network, welches dieses Thema in Deutschland und Europa voranbringen wird, zum ersten Mal zusammen. Die von der Gesellschaft für Neuroadaptive Technology e.V. organisierte Veranstaltung bringt führende Experten aus Wissenschaft, Industrie und Politik zusammen, um die Zukunft der Neuroadaptiven KI zu gestalten. Ziel ist es, einen neuen, einen europäischen Weg aufzuzeigen und zu diskutieren, über den sich europäische KI-Geschäftsmodelle in Zukunft auf dem Weltmarkt werden behaupten können.
Das brAIn network meeting bietet eine einzigartige Plattform für den Austausch innovativer Ideen und die Förderung neuer Kooperationen. Zu den Highlights der Konferenz zählen Keynotes renommierter Wissenschaftler, praxisnahe Workshops und Podiumsdiskussionen zu den neuesten Entwicklungen und Anwendungen der neuroadaptiven Künstlichen Intelligenz.

The annual Cosyne meeting provides an inclusive forum for the exchange of empirical and theoretical approaches to problems in systems neuroscience, in order to understand how neural systems function. The Main Meeting is single-track. A set of invited talks is selected by the Executive Committee, and additional talks and posters are selected by the Program Committee, based on submitted abstracts. The Workshops feature in-depth discussion of current topics of interest, in a small group setting.

The Göttingen Meeting 2025 continues and supports what was always the aim of the original Neurobiology Meeting over 40 years ago: to give (young) scientists the space they need to learn from the work of their colleagues from all disciplines and to grow with their own presentations in symposia and poster sessions.

Gefühle, Lachen, Gähnen, manche Bewegungen haben eine ansteckende Wirkung. In der Neurowissenschaft vermutet man, dass bestimmte Vorgänge im Gehirn spiegelnde Effekte produzieren, die ein Schlüssel zur Erklärung von Empathie und gegenseitigem Verstehen sein könnten.

»Spiegelneuronen« ist eine Einladung zu einem 'körperlichen Nachdenken' über das Verhältnis von Individuum und Gesellschaft.

Wie nehmen wir die Welt um uns herum wahr? Warum finden wir uns auch in einer fremden Stadt zurecht? Und warum können wir uns in einem sozialen Kontext, wie einem Restaurantbesuch, angemessen verhalten? Die Antworten auf diese Fragen liegen in unseren internen Weltmodellen – mentalen Repräsentationen der Realität, die auf unseren Erfahrungen, Beobachtungen und unserem Wissen basieren. Sie helfen uns, Vorhersagen zu treffen, fehlende Informationen zu ergänzen und uns zielgerichtet in der Welt zu bewegen. Doch wie genau entstehen und verändern sich diese internen Weltmodelle? Was haben sie mit psychischen Störungen wie Depression oder Psychosen zu tun? Und wie sieht künstliche Intelligenz die Welt?

Diese und weitere spannende Fragen stehen im Mittelpunkt von „BrAInWorlds: Die Welt in unserem Kopf“. Das interaktive Format lädt die Besucher*innen dazu ein, ihre eigene Wahrnehmung der Welt auf die Probe zu stellen. Durch eine Reihe von Vorträgen, Mitmach-Stationen und interaktiven Installationen können Teilnehmende hautnah erleben, wie unser Gehirn die Wirklichkeit konstruiert – und welche Herausforderungen dies für Mensch und Künstliche Intelligenz mit sich bringt.

EBRAINS is an open research infrastructure that gathers data, tools and computing facilities for brain-related research, built with interoperability at the core. The EBRAINS tutorials and users day is for two audiences: newcomers to the EBRAINS Research Infrastructure (introductions, overviews, beginner hands-on tutorials) and seasoned EBRAINS users for advanced tutorials and user discussion groups with developers.

The event offers:

- Quick demonstration of a sample set of "EBRAINS science tools in action" in the morning plenary talks (this part of the event can also be attended online free of charge)
- Followed by parallel hands-on tutorials: meeting participants can attend 3 consecutive sessions and choose for each from a set of in parallel tutorials. This part is onsite only for most tutorials.

Entladungen unserer Nervenzellen treten nicht nur signalgesteuert, sondern auch spontan auf. Hat dieses Grundrauschen eine Funktion? Eine Veranstaltung der Reihe Berlin Brains on Tour im Zeiss-Großplanetarium, Prenzlauer Allee 80, 10405 Berlin

The 14th Winter School "Ethics of Neuroscience and AI" is taking place on Feb 24 - Feb 28, 2025. It is organized by the BCCN Berlin/ICCN, the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, and the Excellence Cluster "Science of Intelligence". The event is tailored for MSc and PhD students, but covers a range of topics of potential interest to other researchers, reflecting on the ethical and societal consequences of modern neuroscience.

Das Bernstein Center Freiburg und die Fakultät für Biologie laden erneut zu spannenden Fragen, kreativen Ansätzen und praxisbezogenen Methoden rund um das Thema Neurowissenschaften ein. Herausragende Neurowissenschaftlerinnen und -wissenschaftler aus ganz Deutschland werden aus Sicht ihrer Disziplin anschaulich und verständlich über ihre Forschung berichten.
Angesprochen wird ein Publikum mit Interesse an den aktuellen Themen der Hirnforschung. Nach einem etwa 40-minütigen Vortrag gibt es Gelegenheit zur Diskussion. Der Eintritt ist frei.

The BCCN Berlin will hold an information day regarding the Master- and PhD-Programs in Computational Neuroscience offered by the center.

In this colloquium, speakers will present their research in various areas of spatial navigation, including behavioral, neuroscientific, and theoretical approaches. The goal is to foster interdisciplinary discussions along the lines of the review article "A Map of Spatial Navigation for Neuroscience" (Parra-Barrero et al., 2023) that proposes a taxonomy of spatial navigation processes in mammals. The talks will cover a diverse range of topics, from the neural underpinnings of navigation to complex navigation behaviors. Attendees will gain a better understanding of how the mammalian brain represents and navigates through space, as well as learn about several cognitive processes such as learning and memory through the lens of spatial navigation.

The NeurReps Workshop brings together researchers from applied mathematics and deep learning with neuroscientists whose work reveals the elegant implementation of mathematical structure in biological neural circuitry. The first and second editions of NeurReps were held at NeurIPS 2022 and at NeurIPS 2023. The invited and contributed talks drew exciting connections between trends in geometric deep learning and neuroscience, emphasizing parallels between equivariant structures in brains and machines. This year's workshop will feature five invited talks covering emerging topics in geometric deep learning, mechanistic interpretability, geometric structure in the brain, world models and the role of dynamics in shaping neural representations.

Viele Nervenzellen sowie auch Zellen im Herzen zeigen intrinsisch oszillatorisches Verhalten auf einer Zeitskala von Millisekunden bis zu wenigen Sekunden. Damit diese Zellen aber im kollektiven Zusammenspiel physiologisch funktionale makroskopische Oszillationen erzeugen können, müssen sie aufeinander »hören« können und ihre Oszillationsperioden aneinander anpassen. Der Vortrag verfolgt zum einen das Ziel, eine Vielzahl bekannter, aber auch einige weniger offensichtliche Oszillationen vorzustellen, die Tieren (und uns Menschen) eine subjektive Zeitwahrnehmung vermitteln könnten. Zum anderen soll ein grundlegendes mathematisches Prinzip der Synchronisation erklärt werden, das erklärt, was »aufeinander zu hören« bedeutet und auch wie dieses Prinzip mechanistisch in Zellverbänden, Organen und sozialen Interaktionen implementiert wird.

Der Vortrag ist Teil der Reihe "Samstags-Uni: Dimension ,Zeit': Temporalität in Wissenschaft, Kunst, Kultur und Gesellschaft" des Studium generale der Universität Freiburg und der Volkshochschule Freiburg in Verbindung mit der Katholischen Akademie der Erzdiözese Freiburg statt.

In diesem Dezember erhalten John J. Hopfield und Geoffrey Hinton den Physik-Nobelpreis 2024 für bahnbrechende Entdeckungen und Erfindungen, die maschinelles Lernen mit künstlichen neuronalen Netzen ermöglichen. Aus diesem Anlass lädt die Physikwerkstatt Rheinland für Mittwoch, 27. November, 18:00 Uhr zu einem allgemeinverständlichen Vortrag in den Wolfgang-Paul-Hörsaal, Kreuzbergweg 28 in Bonn, ein. Es spricht Prof. Dr. Raoul-Martin Memmesheimer vom Institut für Genetik der Universität Bonn. Der Eintritt ist frei. Eine Anmeldung ist nicht erforderlich.

The “Statistical Physics of Cognition” workshop aims to bring together a diverse group of experts, including theoreticians, experimentalists, mathematical modellers, and data analysts, to explore statistical physics-based approaches to understanding the brain.

Since its inception in 2007, the BrainModes conference series has been a beacon for the neuroscience community, drawing attention to the intricate dynamics of brain functionality. These topics are at the forefront of hashtag#neuroscience research, offering novel insights into how the brain operates as a complex system. By focusing on these areas BrainModesBilbao2024 will serve as a vibrant platform for both emerging and established researchers, clinicians, and scholars to exchange ideas, consolidate collaborations, and discuss the latest advancements in the field.

Techniques to record neuronal data from populations of neurons are rapidly improving, allowing for simultaneous recordings from hundreds of channels while animals perform complex behavioral tasks. The analysis of such massive and intricate data sets poses significant challenges. ANDA-NI aims to equip participants with theoretical and practical training in state-of-the-art analysis approaches for neurophysiological data.

Keeping line with previous editions of the Brain Criticality conferences series, this conference will present the latest experimental and theoretical advancements in the study of critical phenomena in brain activity and their functional relevance. While preserving emphasis on criticality, this edition will feature as well communications about general collective behavior and dynamic complexity in the brain (and other biological systems).

We invite you to participate in the “Spontaneous Activity in Brain Development” meeting, a dynamic forum for neuroscientists exploring brain activity during development. The third SPONT meeting, SPONT2024, is scheduled from 4-6 November 2024 in Altea, a picturesque seaside town near Alicante in Spain.

This online workshop brings together researchers in the fields of computational neuroscience, machine learning, and neuromorphic engineering to present their work and discuss ways of translating these findings into a better understanding of neural circuits. Topics include artificial and biologically plausible learning algorithms and the dissection of trained spiking circuits toward understanding neural processing. We have a manageable number of talks with ample time for discussions.

Jedes Jahr im Herbst finden die Science Days statt – Deutschlands größtes Wissenschafts- und MINT-Festival. Gemeinsam mit Institutionen aus Wissenschaft, Bildung, und Wirtschaft wird ein faszinierendes und sehr vielfältiges Angebot zusammengestellt. MINT-Themen werden aus unterschiedlichen Richtungen und Blickwinkeln präsentiert und die Besuchenden bekommen Einblicke in hochaktuelle Themen und deren Erforschung.

Das Bernstein Netzwerk wird bei dieser Veranstaltung einen Informationsstand haben.

The EITN Fall School in Computational Neuroscience consists of a 10-day course in theoretical and computational neuroscience, from cellular to whole-brain levels. The course is structured in thematic days with lectures, tutorials, and project work.

The course is typically aimed for PhD students, young postdocs, or master students interested to learn more about techniques of computational neuroscience, and the use of various simulation environments for model building. The students will form thematic groups to work on predefined subjects, with the help of tutors.

The course will cover cellular models, models of brain signals, circuit models and networks, mean-field models, and whole-brain models. There will be lectures and tutorials associated with these topics.

Each year, scientists from around the world congregate to discover new ideas, share their research, and experience the best the field has to offer. Attend so you can: present research, network with scientists, attend session and events, and browse the exhibit hall. Join the nearly half a million neuroscientists from around the world who have propelled their careers by presenting an abstract at an SfN annual meeting — the premier global neuroscience event.

The Bernstein Network will have an information booth at this event!

Each year the Bernstein Network invites the international computational neuroscience community to the annual Bernstein Conference for intensive scientific exchange. It has established itself as one of the most renown conferences worldwide in this field, attracting students, postdocs and PIs from around the world to meet and discuss new scientific discoveries.

The Bernstein Network will have an information booth at this event!

The 2024 Tübingen Systems Neuroscience Symposium (SNS 2024) brings together leading international researchers in systems neuroscience. The symposium features plenary talks, poster sessions, lab visit and a conference dinner. Join us in Tübingen to learn about the latest advances.

The ACAIN 2024 symposium and course is an interdisciplinary event featuring leading scientists from AI and Neuroscience, providing a special opportunity to learn about cutting-edge research in the fields of AI, Neuroscience, Neuroscience-Inspired AI, Human-Level AI, and Cognitive Science.

The 4th Advanced Course and Symposium on Artificial Intelligence & Neuroscience (ACAIN) is a full-immersion five-day Course and Symposium at the Riva del Sole Resort & SPA, Castiglione della Pescaia (Grosseto), Tuscany, Italy on cutting-edge advances in Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience with lectures delivered by world-renowned experts. The Course provides a stimulating environment for academics, early career researchers, Post-Docs, PhD students and industry leaders. Participants will also have the chance to present their results with oral talks or posters, and to interact with their colleagues, in a convivial and productive environment.

The goal of this school is to provide introductory lectures to international young investigators (mainly graduate students and post-doctoral fellows) on recent advances in the science and technology related to non-human primate research, with relevance to the understanding of human brain functions and disorders.

The European Summer School exposes young vision researchers—at the late pre-doctoral or early post-doctoral level—to the principal methods and seminal issues of contemporary visual neuroscience. In addition, it seeks to build a basic fluency in the emerging lingua franca of computational neuroscience. The range of topics is broad, literally from spikes to awareness, and the pace correspondingly brisk. This intensive experience should allow participants take a broader view of, and make more informed decisions about, their future research direction.

We bring together leading experts on creativity from different scientific disciplines to discuss unifying approaches to operationalize creativity, investigate its neural mechanisms and develop theoretical and experimental concepts to probe and corroborate such mechanisms, especially on the level of neuronal networks. For this reason, we provide an interdisciplinary framework for the conference and bring experts from cognitive science together with systems neuroscientists as well as experts from computer science.

Are you ready for an expedition into the multifarious world of animal behavior, where the lab meets the wild? Join us for RELab, a unique experimental workshop in the scenic location of Lake Constance, Germany.

BonnBrain³ stands at the forefront of cutting-edge scientific inquiry, uniting experts from diverse fields in a premier international conference focused on unraveling the complexities of states, behavior, neural circuits, and codes. This interdisciplinary scientific gathering prioritizes the presentation of groundbreaking and unpublished research, fostering insightful discussions after each talk and nurturing informal interactions among scientists at all career stages.

CCN is an annual forum for discussion among researchers in cognitive science, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, dedicated to understanding the computations that underlie complex behavior. The conference began in 2017, with a goal to deepen interactions between these disciplines and to discover ways that the communities can benefit one another and leverage each other’s successes.

The third instantiation of this European Summer School will bring together PhD students, early postdocs, and an international list of faculty for an intense training programme in primate cognitive and systems neuroscience. It will provide an outstanding training opportunity for young scientists working with non-human primates.
Teaching will focus on cognitive processes in primate sensory and motor systems as well as in social settings and decision making, and will include important and novel results and methodologies. Topics of animal welfare, ethics, and media outreach will also be covered. Each faculty member will teach for about one half-day and furthermore will be available for individual scientific discussions, career planning advice, and scientific networking. Participants are expected to present their ongoing work in a poster presentation.

The curriculum integrates cutting-edge advances in machine learning and causality research with state-of-the-art modeling approaches in neuroscience.

What are common principles of natural and artificial intelligence?
The core challenge of intelligence is generalization. Neuroscience, cognitive science, and AI are all questing for principles that help generalization.

Computational Neuroscience and Inference from data are disciplines that extensively use tools from Mathematics and Physics to understand the behavior of model neuronal networks and analyze data from real experiments. Due to its interdisciplinary nature and the complexity of the neuronal networks, the list of techniques that are borrowed from Physics and Mathematics is an extensive one. Although using tools from standard curriculum of Physics, Mathematics and Engineering is common, more advanced research requires methods and techniques that are not usually covered in any single discipline.

To fill in this gap, this summer school covers some of the most important methods used in computational neuroscience research through both main lectures and scientific seminars (5-6 main lectures per topic and 1-2 seminars by each invited seminar speaker).

Our goal is​ to teach advanced techniques in model-based analysis of behavior (humans and other animals) to cognitive and computational neuroscientists at PhD and early career levels. This will be achieved through structured lectures and talks, together with a strong focus on hands-on tutorials and group projects aimed at making the obtained knowledge directly applicable to the participants' own research. Our goal is that the trainees acquire both the conceptual basis and the technical skills that will enable them to pursue a full modeling approach on their own when they come back to their lab.

The Organization for Computational Neurosciences promotes meetings and courses in computational neuroscience and organizes the Annual CNS Meeting which serves as a forum for young scientists to present their work and to interact with senior leaders in the field.

Computational approaches to neuroscience will produce important advances in our understanding of neural processing. Prominent success will come in areas where strong inputs from neurobiological, behavioral and computational investigation can interact. The theme of the course is that an understanding of the computational problems, the constraints on solutions to these problems, and the range of possible solutions can help guide research in neuroscience. Through a combination of lectures and hands-on experience with MATLAB- and Python-based computer tutorials and projects, this intensive course will examine visual information processing from the retina to higher cortical areas, spatial pattern analysis, motion analysis, neuronal coding and decoding, attention, and decision-making.

Systems Vision Science combines computational, behavioral, and neuroscience methods to discover functions and algorithms for vision in various brain regions and their implementations in neural circuits. This summer school is designed for everyone interested in gaining a systems level understanding of biological vision.

The FENS Forum of neuroscience is the largest international neuroscience meeting in Europe. Taking place in even years, the FENS Forum rotates between different European countries and attracts more than 7,000 international delegates.

The Bernstein Network will have an information booth at this event!

The AREADNE conferences bring scientific leaders from around the world to present their recent findings on the functioning of neuronal ensembles in an informal and beautiful setting on Milos. The conference series emphasizes interaction with a size and pace that encourages in-depth discussion. Interested researchers are strongly encouraged to submit an abstract for poster presentation as attendance is strictly limited, and the conference typically sells out. Abstract submission deadline is 26 January 2024. Send us your best work!

The NEST Initiative is excited to invite everyone interested in Neural Simulation Technology and the NEST Simulator to the virtual NEST Conference 2024. The NEST Conference provides an opportunity for the NEST Community to meet, exchange success stories, swap advice, learn about current developments in and around NEST spiking network simulation and its application. We particularly encourage young scientists to participate in the conference!

The International Conference on Mathematical Neuroscience (ICMNS) is an
inter-disciplinary conference series, bringing together theoretical/computational neuroscientists and mathematicians. The conferences are aimed at scientists interested in using or developing mathematical techniques for neuroscience problems.

With this symposium, the BCCN Berlin will celebrate the 20. anniversary of the Center and its achievements.

The program is structured around a series of in-depth morning presentations delivered by invited speakers. These talks will feature recent advances in the field of dynamics, plasticity, and computation in neuronal circuits, with an emphasis on both mathematical tools and biological implications. In the afternoons, participants will share their own research through contributed talks and poster presentations. The primary objective of this program is to foster a collaborative and prolific exchange of ideas among emerging scientists in the field of Theoretical Neuroscience.

This conference is planned as a truly interdisciplinary event. We intend to bring many communities together that are working to expand our understanding of the human brain, and to engineer brain-inspired technologies of low power and increased computational abilities as well as their application in present and future AI systems. The location is the Eurogress, in the heart of the historic city of Aachen, with close connections to RWTH University and nearby Forschungszentrum Jülich.

Two decades into the 21st century, how close are we to building an artificial intelligence inspired by models of the brain? In this exploratory symposium, we invite submissions presenting mathematical models of brain function or computational ideas about intelligence. We give priority to those models that can account for brain or behavioural data, or provide simulations to that effect.

The 10th EBRAINS Baltic-Nordic Summer School on Neuroscience “From Neurons to The Virtual Brain, Consciousness and Artificial Intelligence” will provide you with the latest achievements in the brain research, implications to AI methods and applications in clinical practice.

Principles of dendritic function and computation:
Understanding how brains generate perception and drive behaviour while being energetically efficient is still one of the biggest challenges of our century. Neurons communicate via synaptic inputs which are located on thin branches known as dendrites which shape how we respond to the external world, encode memories, and generate behaviour. Recent technical developments have enabled the study of dendrites at multiple levels, from the organization and plasticity of single synaptic inputs to dendritic computations in behaviour. The goal of this workshop is to bring together international scientific leaders who work on molecular, biophysical, anatomical, computational and/or functional aspects of dendrites to further our understanding of how these beautiful structures contribute to different brain functions and their abnormalities.

The IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL) conference is a unique meeting gathering researchers from computer science, robotics, psychology, neuroscience, and other disciplines to share and discuss research on how humans and other animals learn and develop and how this can inform and be informed by robotics and machine learning systems.