Scope and Motivation
As the central organ of the nervous system, the brain must integrate and process information from a wide range of sensory and internal sources in real time. Neuronal assemblies form hierarchical and parallel pathways that transform this information into motor actions and higher-order cognitive functions. Understanding and modelling these processes, and detecting their disruption at an early stage, remains one of the most challenging problems in contemporary science and engineering.
Rapid advances in neuroinformatics, neuroengineering, computer science, electrical and biomedical engineering are driving the development of computationally intelligent methods capable of deciphering brain information-processing mechanisms and quantifying subtle changes associated with neurological and psychiatric conditions.
The aim of this special session is:
- To showcase recent advances in computationally intelligent techniques for processing and modelling neuronal data.
- To provide an interdisciplinary forum for scientists and practitioners decoding brain function using expert and computationally intelligent systems.
- To highlight novel approaches for early prediction and detection of brain disorders from multi-modal brain data.
Topics of Interest
We invite original research contributions and visionary surveys on (but not limited to) the following topics:
- Analysis and processing of brain data using brain/bio-inspired methods
- Computationally intelligent techniques for brain–computer interfaces
- Computationally intelligent techniques for neuroscience and clinical applications
- Explainable and interpretable methods for brain data
- Machine learning methods in brain and cognition research
- Neuronal image processing, analysis, and modelling
- Neuronal signal processing, modelling, and neuronal pattern analysis
- Multi-modal fusion of imaging, electrophysiology, omics, and clinical data for early diagnosis
- Trustworthy, robust, and generalisable AI for neuroimaging and neurophysiology
Important Dates (IJCNN 2026)
No extension will be given. Please submit well ahead of the deadline.
Organising Committee
Prof Mufti Mahmud
Professor of Cognitive Computing with research spanning brain informatics, computational intelligence, applied data analysis, and big-data technologies for healthcare. He has secured over £4M in research funding and published more than 400 peer-reviewed outputs. He has extensive leadership experience as General Chair of the Brain Informatics conference series and founding Chair of the Applied Intelligence and Informatics conference. He serves on editorial boards of several journals and as Chair or member of multiple IEEE CIS committees.
Prof Francesco C. Morabito
Full Professor of electrical and neural engineering with over 400 publications and several books and patents covering machine/deep learning, biomedical signal processing, radar, nuclear fusion, non-destructive evaluation, and computational intelligence. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and INNS, a Foreign Member of the Royal Academy of Doctors (Spain), and has served as President of the Italian Neural Network Society (SIREN) and Governor of the International Neural Network Society (INNS).
Prof Khan M. Iftekharuddin
Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programmes and Director of the ODU Vision Lab. His research interests include computational modelling, machine learning, medical image analysis, omics data analysis, distortion-invariant recognition, biologically inspired human and machine-centric recognition, and computer vision, with a strong focus on clinical applications.
Dr Maryam Doborjeh
Associate Professor and Director of the Knowledge Engineering and Discovery Research Institute (KEDRI) at AUT. Specialises in neuroinformatics, spiking neural networks, and brain-inspired computing within. Her work focuses on modelling spatio-temporal brain data (EEG, fMRI) and developing explainable and personalised AI for neurological and psychological applications, including early detection of brain disorders and cognitive assessment.
Submission & Publication
Authors are invited to submit original, high-quality work following the WCCI–IJCNN 2026 format. All papers will undergo peer review and accepted papers will appear in the conference proceedings.
Submission must be made through the official IJCNN 2026 submission system by selecting this special session.