Foundation Models for the Brain and Body
NeurIPS 2025 Workshop

December 2025 | San Diego, California

Workshop Description

Our brains and bodies speak a rich and complex biological language of neural and physiological signals, a language that AI models are increasingly capable of deciphering as large-scale datasets become available. Recent advances in brain interfacing and wearable technologies, including EEG, intracortical electrophysiology, EMG, MEG, and ECG, have enabled the broad collection of these signals across real-world contexts and diverse populations. This growing wealth of data is driving a shift toward foundation models: large-scale, pretrained AI systems designed to learn from biosignals and generalize across diverse downstream applications, from brain-computer interfacing to health monitoring.

Realizing this potential, however, requires addressing the unique challenges that come with biosignal timeseries: they are noisy, heterogeneous, and collected under variable conditions across subjects, devices, and environments. To meet these challenges, this workshop brings together neuroscientists, biomedical engineers, wearable tech researchers, and machine learning experts advancing foundation model approaches. Through interdisciplinary dialogue, we aim to catalyze the next generation of AI models that can capture the complexity of the brain, body, and behavior at scale.

Invited Speakers

Hubert Banville
Hubert Banville

Meta

Juan Helen Zhou
Juan Helen Zhou

National University of Singapore

Cuntai Guan
Cuntai Guan

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Guillermo Sapiro
Guillermo Sapiro

Apple, Princeton University

Eva Dyer
Eva Dyer

University of Pennsylvania

Organizers

Mehdi Azabou
Mehdi Azabou

Columbia, ARNI

Cole Hurwitz
Cole Hurwitz

Columbia University

Sophia Sanborn
Sophia Sanborn

Stanford University

Sana Tonekaboni
Sana Tonekaboni

MIT, Harvard

Paul Scotti
Paul Scotti

Sophont, Princeton

Nanda H Krishna
Nanda H Krishna

Mila

Pierre Guetschel
Pierre Guetschel

Donders Institute

Steering Committee

Alexandre Gramfort
Alexandre Gramfort

Meta

Liam Paninski
Liam Paninski

Columbia University

Blake Richards
Blake Richards

Mila

Schedule

December 2025 - NeurIPS Workshop Day

8:45 - 9:00

Introduction & Opening Remarks

Mehdi Azabou, Cole Hurwitz

Session I: Modeling Brain-Wide Activity with Imaging and EEG

9:00 - 9:30

Towards generalizable brain decoders with EEG foundation models

Hubert Banville (Meta)
9:30 - 10:00

Interpretable Brain Dynamics Foundation Models for vision decoding and behavioral outcome prediction

Juan Helen Zhou (National University of Singapore)
10:00 - 10:30

Spotlight Talks

3 contributed talks (10 mins each)

Selected Contributors
10:30 - 12:00

Poster Session I + Demo Session

Contributed Works + Live Demos

12:00 - 13:00

Break

Session II: Modeling Physiological and Wearable Signals

13:00 - 13:30

Multimodal Physiological Foundation Models to Handle Arbitrary Missing Modalities

Cuntai Guan (Nanyang Technological University)
13:30 - 14:00

TBA

Guillermo Sapiro (Apple, Princeton University)
14:00 - 14:30

Spotlight Talks

3 contributed talks (10 mins each)

Selected Contributors
14:30 - 15:00

Coffee Break

Session III: Modeling the Brain at Single-Neuron Resolution

15:00 - 15:30

Embracing Complexity: Foundation Models and the Data-Driven Future of Neuroscience

Eva Dyer (University of Pennsylvania)
15:30 - 16:30

Panel Discussion

Panelists: Eva Dyer, Guillermo Sapiro, Hubert Banville, Juan Helen Zhou, Cuntai Guan

Moderated Discussion
16:30 - 17:00

Spotlight Talks

3 contributed talks (10 mins each)

Selected Contributors
17:00 - 18:00

Poster Session II

Contributed Works

Community

Sponsors