Project leader

Prof. Dr. Rainer Goebel Phone: +31 43 3884214 Fax: +31 43 3884125 E-mail

Project staff

Dr. Ralph Brecheisen, PhD Phone: +31 43 3884046 Fax: n.a. E-mail

Maria Heinze, MSc Phone: +31 43 3884046 Fax: n.a. E-mail

Institute presentation

Brain Innovation B.V. (BI), located in Maastricht, Netherlands, is manufacturer and distributor of several multi-modal neuroimaging and modeling software packages that are developed, tested, supported, and distributed by a team of more than 10 employees being experts in software development as well as in applied neuroscience, biomedical engineering, research methods, business administration and business management. BI has a substantial experience in international scientific collaboration. The current major product, BrainVoyager QX, is a commercially available cross-platform neuroimaging tool for fMRI, DTI, EEG, MEG and TMS neuronavigation that is used in hundreds of research labs. Brain Innovation has long-standing experience in online and offline machine learning methods and has pioneered multivariate fMRI analysis tools together with Maastricht University (e.g. searchlight mapping, recursive feature elimination) that have become standard in the neuroimaging community. Besides IMAGEMEND, BI has a substantial track record of involvement in EU-funded projects including Marie Curie ITNs “Codde” and “C7” and FP7 HEALTH INNOVATION grant “BRAINTRAIN”.

For real-time functional imaging and neurofeedback, BI has developed Turbo-BrainVoyager (TBV), a highly optimized, easy to use software package for the real-time analysis and dynamic visualization of functional magnetic resonance imaging data sets. BrainVoyager QX and Turbo-BrainVoyager serve as an important basis for the software development in IMAGEMEND. TBV has been developed over 12 years for advanced real-time applications, including neurofeedback studies and brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). BI has also collaborated on the first clinical applications of fMRI-based neurofeedback in depression and Parkinson’s disease.

Rainer Goebel is founder, CEO and chief software developer of Brain Innovation. He is also full professor of cognitive neuroscience at Maastricht University, director of the Maastricht Brain Imaging Centre and chief science and technology officer (CSTO) of Scannexus housing 3, 7 and 9.4 Tesla MRI scanners. He is developer of the leading commercial for neuroimaging data analysis and creator of the first commercially available software for real-time fMRI based neurofeedback and brain computer interfaces. He was elected president of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping and has published more than 200 scientific peer-reviewed papers on neuroimaging and computational neuroscience (including the journals Nature, Science, Neuron, Nature Neuroscience and PNAS, H-Index 52). He supervised more than 30 PhD students and postdocs, many of which now belong to the neuroimaging leadership (e.g. Elia Formisano, Niko Kriegeskorte, David Linden, Lars Muckli). He co-pioneered fMRI neurofeedback with Dr. Nikolaus Weiskopf (University College London) and Dr. Niels Birbaumer (Tübingen University) and is pioneer of social real-time fMRI studies (“Brain Pong” neurofeedback study). He is developer of the first fMRI-based BCI for communication and has been awarded with an ERC Advanced Investigator Grant (2011-2016) to crack the columnar-level code in specialized brain areas using ultra-high magnetic field fMRI.