environMENTAL EU Project

Due to multiple requests, the submission deadline for proposals to the EBRAINS Roadmap has been extended to 23:59 CET on 15 March 2026.

Contribute to the EBRAINS 10-Year Roadmap 2026–2036 here: ebrains.eu/news-and-eve...

Neurocognitive characterization of behaviour and mental illness through time-varying brain network analysis - Nature Communications Here, the authors find that time-varying brain network analysis better captures cognitive processing than static methods and reveals network measurement linked to task performance and psychopathology ...

📢 NEW #PAPER from the environMENTAL Consortium

🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

📜 Paper title: Neurocognitive characterization of behaviour and mental illness through time-varying brain network analysis

🎉 Congratulations to Xiao Chang and the team on their publication in #NatureCommunications

Join our 'Multiscale Brain Simulations in EBRAINS: from the Neuron to the Patient' webinar this Thursday to learn how EBRAINS supports advanced brain modelling and simulation across scales!

Register here: ebrains.eu/news-and-eve...

Interested in learning more about how to use the tools and services on EBRAINS? Make sure to attend our two webinars in February!

More information and registration details in the thread below 👇

📢 The environMENTAL 2025 Annual Round Up Newsletter is out
🔗 mailchi.mp/55b3df32e479...

Progress includes:
🌎 The Expert by Experience Board
🌍 Virtual Reality developments
🌏 StreetMind
🌎 Linking MoBa data with environmental data
🌍 Publications

Thank you to everyone who played a part in them!

Generating synthetic task-based brain fingerprints for population neuroscience using deep learning - Communications Biology DeepTaskGen uses deep learning to generate synthetic task-based fMRI maps from resting state data, enabling scalable neuroimaging studies. It preserves individual variation and outperforms benchmarks ...

NEW PAPER 📢 Congratulations to Emin Serin on publishing his latest paper, titled ‘Generating synthetic task-based brain fingerprints for population neuroscience using deep learning’.

Click on the link to find out more: www.nature.com/articles/s42...

#mentalhealthresearch #HorizonEU

Introducing environMENTAL Work Package 12 Work Package Lead: Sven Twardziok Charite University Medicine Berlin Institute of Health (BIH)

environMENTAL is a project focused on managing, utilizing and enriching data effectively. Work Package 12 (WP12) is specifically responsible for the data management aspect of this project, ensuring that all research data and software generated within the project are managed according to the FAIR principles, Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. This involves setting up a data management plan, providing a standardized and secure data infrastructure, managing the framework to utilize geospatial data, and developing a central meta-database to support the findability and accessibility of all data. The data infrastructure is built upon the cloud infrastructure at the Digital Health Center of the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) at Charité. WP12's efforts ensure that data is safely stored, accessible to the consortium and the scientific community, and compliant with legal frameworks and GDPR.

Interested to know about environMENTAL Work Package 12?

WP12 are responsible for the data management of the project. WP12 ensure all research data and software generated within the project are managed according to the FAIR principles:

🔹Findable
🔹Accessible
🔹Interoperable
🔹Reusable

#HorizonEU

Prof. Viktor Jirsa presenting The Virtual Brain Modelling at the environMENTAL Summer School, October 2025.

This month the environMENTAL project held a hybrid Summer School on environmental and computational neuroscience, hosted by Aix-Marseille University.

Over 19,000 online and 30 in-person participants took part over the two days.

Thank you to all of our speakers and participants for taking part!

Picture of the environMENTAL Consortium at the Steering Committee Meeting in Marseille, France.

Last week, the environMENTAL Consortium held a Steering Committee Meeting in Marseille, hosted by consortium partner, INS - Institut de Neurosciences des Systèmes at Aix-Marseille University.

Thanks to all who attended for making the meeting so productive!

#HorizonEurope #mentalhealth

📢 Final call to sign up to our Summer School!

𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗲: 8th – 9th October 2025
𝗟𝗼𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Aix-Marseille Université
𝗛𝘆𝗯𝗿𝗶𝗱: Online participation possible
𝗙𝗲𝗲: 𝗙𝗿𝗲𝗲 event
𝗥𝗲𝗴𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: shorturl.at/72RAd

#HorizonEU #summerschool

Themes, dates & organizers of the environMENTAL seminar series The consortium has invited to different seminars to present and discuss its key project objectives and to create a forum for stakeholder interaction

📢 Online recording now available: Seminar by Prof. Andreas Heinz, titled “Intersectional Aspects of Climate Change”

🔗 Recording of the seminar can be found here: www.environmental-project.org/resources/en...

#Seminarseries #Mentalhealth #HorizonEU

📢 Join our Seminar with Prof. Andreas Heinz this TUESDAY exploring the Intersectional Aspects of Climate Change.

📅 12 August 2025
⏰ 10 AM CEST / 4 PM CST

✍ 𝗥𝗘𝗚𝗜𝗦𝗧𝗥𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡: intranet.concentris.de/event/9f4d58...

#HorizonEurope #mentalhealth #climatechange

Environmental project at the ISMB / ECCB Conference Marcel Jentsch presented his poster at the Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology / European Conference on Computational Biology Conference, Liverpool, July 2025. Marcel’s poster is titled: ‘CLUES: A Comprehensive Workflow for Integrating Geospatial Data in Biomedical Research’. Stay tuned for more about CLUES.

📢 Last week environMENTAL Consortium member Marcel Jentsch presented emerging research from the environMENTAL Project.

📕 Marcel’s poster was titled, ‘CLUES: A Comprehensive Workflow for Integrating Geospatial Data in Biomedical Research’.

ℹ️ Stay tuned for more information about CLUES.

#HorizonEU

SUMMER SCHOOL Theme: environmental and computational neuroscience Location: Aix-Marseille University and online participation Dates: 8th and 9th October 2025

📢 Join us for a Summer School on environmental and computational neuroscience

𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗲: 8th – 9th October 2025
𝗟𝗼𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Aix-Marseille Université
𝗛𝘆𝗯𝗿𝗶𝗱: Online participation possible
𝗙𝗲𝗲: 𝗙𝗿𝗲𝗲 event

𝗙𝗼𝗿 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝗴𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: shorturl.at/72RAd

#summerschool #HorizonEU

📢 Join us for the upcoming Brain Health Seminar: Intersectional Aspects of Climate Change with Prof. Andreas Heinz 📅 12 August 2025 ⏰ 10 AM CEST / 4 PM CST

📢 Join us for the upcoming Brain Health Seminar: Intersectional Aspects of Climate Change with Prof. Andreas Heinz

📅 12 August 2025

⏰ 10 AM CEST / 4 PM CST

✍ 𝗥𝗘𝗚𝗜𝗦𝗧𝗥𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡: intranet.concentris.de/event/9f4d58...

#MentalHealthResearch #HorizonEU

Themes, dates & organizers of the environMENTAL seminar series The consortium has invited to different seminars to present and discuss its key project objectives and to create a forum for stakeholder interaction

📢 Online recording now available: Seminar by Surjo R. Soekadar titled, “From Restoring Movement to Mental Health: The Next Frontier of Brain-Computer Interfaces”

🔗 Recording and slides of the seminar can be found here: www.environmental-project.org/resources/en...

#Mentalhealth #HorizonEU

Join our environMENTAL Seminar with Surjo Soedekar this TUESDAY 24th June 10am CET / 4pm CST.

Title: 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗠𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗠𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗳 𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻-𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘂𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗲𝘀

Register here: intranet.concentris.de/event/9f0e83...

📢 PAPER SPOTLIGHT! Read an interview with Tristram Lett about his latest paper with colleagues from the environMENTAL Consortium.

Find out more on the paper published in JAMA Psychiatry: www.charite.de/en/research/...

#publication #mentalhealthresearch #HorizonEU

Framework for Brain-Derived Dimensions of Psychopathology This diagnostic study offers a framework for grouping clinical symptoms according to covariation and underlying brain mechanisms.

📢 NEW PUBLICATION from the environMENTAL Project!

Tristram Lett and colleagues identified six novel symptoms groups that span multiple diagnostic criteria according to shared neuroimaging features.

Click on the link for more information:

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

#publication #HorizonEU

📢 Join us for the upcoming Brain Health Seminar: 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗠𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗠𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗳 𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻-𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘂𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗲𝘀 with Prof. Surjo Soekadar 🧠

📅 24 June 2025
⏰ 10 AM CEST / 4 PM CST

🔗 More info & link to registration: www.environmental-project.org/events/onlin...

Introducing environMENTAL Work Package 11 Work Package Title: Project Coordination and Management Lead: Gunter Schumann, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin

A dedicated team spanning across Charité Berlin and concentris research management GmbH ensures the overall management and coordination of the environMENTAL project. WP11 promotes collaboration across 24 global partners. This includes managing grant reports and deliverables, financial administration, supporting ethics processes, and planning international meetings and events. WP11 aligns project tasks and resources so that goals and milestones are achieved. In short, WP11 ensures that the cogs of the project keep turning.

Behind every successful research consortium is an expert project management team.

Keen to find out about environMENTAL Work Package 11?

#mentalhealthresearch #HorizonEU

Introducing environMENTAL Work Package 10 Title: Dissemination, Communication and Exploitation WP Lead: Esther Hitchen from the Charite Universitätsmedizin Berlin

Work Package 10 aims to create scientific and societal impact from the project’s results. We do this through: 1. Planning and coordinating the project’s dissemination, communication, and engagement activities 2. Engaging with diverse international stakeholder groups and involving them in the development of the project 3. Providing training, such as Summer Schools and Seminar Series 4. Planning and promoting the use of results in ways that can benefit society

Interested to know more about environMENTAL Work Package 10?

WP10 aims to create scientific and societal impact from the project’s results. This includes engaging with stakeholder groups, providing training, and coordinating the project’s communication, dissemination and engagement activities.

Introducing environMENTAL Work Package Title: Responsible Research and Innovation Lead: Bernd Stahl from the University of Nottingham

WP9 ensure the environMENTAL project’s research and innovations are ethical, inclusive, and aligned with societal values. WP9 has three key objectives: Stakeholder Engagement: We promote open dialogue between researchers and key stakeholders. Co-Design and Reflection: We integrate stakeholder perspectives into every step of the research process. Ethics and Compliance: We ensure that all project activities meet European and local legal requirements while addressing societal expectations. WP9 bridges the gap between cutting-edge science and social responsibility, ensuring that our work supports sustainable, meaningful change in mental health research.

Interested to know more about environMENTAL Work Package 9?

WP9 bridges the gap between science and social responsibility, ensuring that our work supports sustainable, meaningful change in mental health research.

#mentalhealthresearch #HorizonEU

Introducing environMENTAL Work Package 8 Title: Digital Intervention Lead: Mel Slater from the University of Barcelona Photo depicts photo of WP8 Team

WP8 has three main goals: 🌎 Use virtual reality (VR) to create scenarios where people can directly experience the impact of various levels of environmental change within a small virtual town. This will be used to carry out experimental studies to understand different factors that may cause distress. 🌍 Develop VR based intervention programmes to alleviate mental health problems associated with environmental change, including self-therapy. 🌍 Make our solutions widely distributed, for example, by using mobile phone apps, and low-cost VR approaches. Photo depicts a student using a VR headset at the environMENTAL Summer School in September 2024.

Interested to know more about environMENTAL Work Package 8?

Mel Slater and his team at the University of Barcelona are developing VR based intervention programmes to alleviate mental health problems associated with environmental change.

#HorizonEU

environMENTAL Introducing Work Package 7 Title: Mechanistic investigations and drug discovery Lead: Karen Schmitt, Ksilink

What are the aims of WP7? WP7 develops a multidisciplinary approach to drug discovery and disease modeling. WP7 aims to develop advanced human derived-cellular models that reflect key molecular mechanisms underlying cognition, behavior, and neurological diseases. To do this we generate cellular models including brain organoids – a miniaturized and simplified version of the brain. We will assess and validate the impacts of stressing specific pathways in these in-vitro models. This paves the way for innovative treatments and improving the lives of individuals affected by neuropsychiatric disorders.

Interested to know more about environMENTAL Work Package 7? WP7 develops a multidisciplinary approach to drug discovery and disease modeling.

The team at Ksilink and ISTA are paving the way for innovative treatments that will improve the lives of individuals affected by neuropsychiatric disorders.

Introducing environMENTAL Work Package 6 Work Package Lead: Tobias Banaschewski from the Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim

WP6 investigates the impact of environmental factors on various mental health conditions capitalizing on data from different cohorts, such as the general population and clinical cohorts. We aim to apply statistical and machine learning methods to the clinical cohorts to examine how environmental factors may associate with psychopathological symptoms among individuals. Additionally, we seek to identify risk factors that influence the development and maintenance of these symptoms. We are a team of researchers with diverse backgrounds, including medicine, psychology, and neuroscience.

Interested to know what environMENTAL Work Package 6 does?

WP6 is a multi-disciplinary team that investigates the impact of environmental factors on various mental health conditions.

Click on the following link for more information: www.nature.com/articles/s44...

#HorizonEU

Mel Slater from the University of Barcelona delivering his masterclass on virtual reality interventions.

environMENTAL Consortium member Mel Slater gave an excellent Masterclass on Virtual Reality Interventions at this year’s General Assembly Meeting.

Click the following link to discover more about the work of Mel and his team: www.environmental-project.org/seminar-seri...

#HorizonEU

The environMENTAL Consortium in the hotel gardens of Pousada Palacio Estoi, Portugal.

The environMENTAL Consortium had a successful General Assembly Meeting this week in Estoi, Portugal!

We held productive research discussions and two members of our Expert by Experience Board joined the meeting.

It’s going to be an exciting couple of years so stay tuned!

#mentalhealthresearch

Introducing environMENTAL Work Package 5 Omics characterisation in deeply phenotyped longitudinal cohorts Lead: Sylvane Desrivières Kings College London

WP5 explores how genetic and environmental factors interact to shape mental health. Our research integrates deep phenotyping with multi-omics approaches to uncover the biological mechanisms underlying mental illness. By integrating large-scale genomics from deeply phenotyped cohorts, we aim to investigate how genetic predispositions and environmental exposures, such as urban living, influence mental health risk and resilience. Powerful computational approaches will enable us to identify causal genes and molecular pathways involved. We strive to identify genetic and environmental signatures and develop refined biomarkers and predictive tools for early intervention.

Interested to know about environMENTAL Work Package 5?

WP5 explores how genetic and environmental factors interact to shape mental health.

Click on the images to find out more!

#HorizonEU #mentalhealthresearch

Introducing environMENTAL Work Package 4 Title: Data analysis and biomarker identification Lead: André Marquant Institution: Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Centre, Nijmegen, the Netherlands

WP4 develops advanced data analysis methods to support the scientific objectives of the project. WP4 aims to: • develop deep-learning based tools to infer population level genetic and environmental determinants of risk and resilience for mental disorders • estimate integrated, multi-modal stratification biomarkers to guide interventions, clinical validation, molecular profiling and predict current and future individual mental health • develop ‘virtual brain’ simulation models for validating our analytic workflows, for testing interventions and better understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying mental disorders using synthetic data.

Interested to know what environMENTAL Work Package 4 does?

WP4 develops advanced data analysis methods to support the scientific objectives of the project.

Click on the images to read more!

#HorizonEU #mentalhealthresearch