The BrainWeb

BrainWeb is a permanent virtual space for online collaborations on projects related to neuroscience. Inspired by initiatives such as Brainhack Global, BrainWeb aims at providing an online workspace to facilitate distributed collaboration on a continuous basis.

Online collaboration

We catch up online every 6 weeks: This is our regular opportunity to chat, present our progress, do spontaneous unconferences or kick off new projects and collaborations.

Propose a project

Before, during, and after the BrainWeb hackathons we will keep track of all BrainWeb projects. All you need to do to add your project to the BrainWeb community is to create a repository on GitHub and to add “BrainWeb” as a topic.
During our meetings, you are invited to pitch your project, find collaborators, break out into smaller meetings in parallel, and continue to work in teams after the online BrainWeb meeting.

Communication

While we all meet in the videoconference space, you can also create your own, more focused videoconference room to discuss & brainstorm in parallel. You will be able to find the list of all simultaneous project rooms in our shared Google Doc below.
We also encourage you to create a channel on Brainhack’s Mattermost , to keep track of your progress and collaborate in between BrainWeb meetings. This will also make it easier for new collaborators to learn about what your team has already achieved.

Format

The BrainWeb Series will host an invited speaker every month aiming at lively discussions and creating interconnections beyond our labs between topics of our interest around evolution, development, philosophy, art, physics, computational geometry, computational neuroscience, neuroinformatics, and more!

The BrainWeb Catch up will be our regular opportunity to chat, present our progress if you wish, do spontaneous unconferences or kick off new projects and collaborations.

The BrainWeb Hackathons will combine project pitches as a start into 3 days of hacking together, unconferencing, coffee chats and a peek into project progress. At the end of the 3 days, each team is invited to share updates on their projects with the entire community!

Let's work together no matter where we are!

BrainWeb Series

05.07.2022. 3pm UTC

A mind set in stone: fossil traces of human brain evolution
Brains do not fossilise, but as they grow and expand during fetal and infant development, they leave an imprint in the bony braincase. Such imprints of fossilised braincases provide direct evidence of brain evolution, but the underlying biological changes have remained elusive. Combining data from fossil skulls, ancient genomes, brain imaging and gene expression helps shed light on the evolutionary changes shaping the human brain. I will highlight two examples separated by more than 3 million years: the evolution of brain growth in Lucy and her kind, and differences between modern humans and Neanderthals.

Let’s get together at 3pm UTC on Crowdcast!

Biosketch
Dr. Philipp Gunz is a biological anthropologist who studies the evolution of human development. Philipp obtained his PhD at the University of Vienna (2005), and works as a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. He is a specialist for the reconstruction of fossil skulls from computed tomographic scans, and the statistical analysis of shape. You can find out more about his research on: https://www.evodevo.de.

> Past talks