Dear Colleagues,

We are excited to announce the upcoming CNS*2025 Workshop "Brains and AI", to be held on Wednesday, July 9, 2025, in Florence, Italy. This workshop will explore the intersection of neuroscience and artificial intelligence - bringing together researchers applying AI to brain data and those leveraging insights from neuroscience to build better AI systems.

https://users.sussex.ac.uk/~tn41/CNS2025_workshop/

Advances in neuroscience techniques have dramatically increased the volume of data we can now collect from animal and human brains. However, this surge in data has introduced new challenges in extracting meaningful insights. Fortunately, these developments have coincided with breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI), which holds the potential to transform how we analyze and utilize scientific information. While there is significant potential here, we are just starting to figure out how to apply modern AI models to interpret and process scientific data, and significant challenges remain. The trend of applying AI to better understand the brain concurs with another reviving trend: applying knowledge from neuroscience to developing new AI. Indeed, despite the tremendous progress, the existing generation of AI shows significant limitations, including a lack of continual learning, poor generalization, dependence on enormous amounts of data for training, bias, and safety problems. These are features where the biological brain excels, highlighting the strong need to learn once more from neuroscience how to develop the next generation of AI. The proposed workshop will combine these two complementary trends, bringing experts from the field together to discuss how AI can facilitate new scientific discoveries and how knowledge of the brain can help improve AI.

Below is the list of confirmed speakers:

• Fleur Zeldenrust
• Vassilis Cutsuridis
• Spyridon Chavlis
• Andreas Tolias (online)
• Robert Legenstein
• Max Garagnani
• Martin Trefzer
• Julian Göltz
• Maxim Bazhenov
• Dhireesha Kudithipudi
• Thomas Nowotny

The workshop will conclude with a panel discussion and open debate.

We look forward to your participation in what promises to be a thought-provoking and engaging event.

Thomas Nowotny, Vassilis Cutsuridis, Maxim Bazhenov