Professor Eilon Vaadia, the Director of the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences led a panel of experts including Professor Yadin Dudai, the Sara and Michael Sela Professor in Neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute of Science; Professor Richard Frackowiak, the Director of the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the CHUV University Hospital in Lausanne and Henry Markram, professor of neuroscience at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology (EPFL), who is also the founder of the Brain Mind Institute, founder and director of the Blue Brain Project.
According to Professor Richard Frackowiak, the future of brain research lies in the creation of a hospital database that would contain complete records of all brain disease related patients from around the world. This database, made available to all researchers and scientists, would consequently assist the accuracy of their diagnosis.
“Dementia is a disease that is going to be like a plague in our aging population,” said Frackowiak. “It’s going to be worse than AIDS - much worse, economically, personally each of you undoubtedly has someone who is already losing their condition or developing some other neurological disorder.”
The panel was supplemented by this year's special exhibition on the brain, “Tomorrow: The State of Mind”, displaying the research of some of Israel's top brain scientists and highlighting their contributions.
Facing Tomorrow 2013 takes place from June 18 - 20 at Jerusalem's International Convention Center. The conference is organized in partnership with Hebrew University.
