Recent breakthroughs in neuroeconomics are helping to understand how the human decision-making process takes place. Although latest advances have revealed that most of the brain processes that regulate our emotions, attitudes and decisions are beyond our consciousness (implicit processes), many companies are still making strategic decisions relying upon explicit measures such as questionnaires and focus groups. However, the consumer neuroscience market is rapidly growing and demands new knowledge, new skills and new approaches to adapt to the technological evolution of the sector but also for comprehending and communicating with consumers. These requests only find a partial match in existing doctoral programmes. RHUMBO addresses this challenge by delivering an innovative multinational, multi-sectorial, and multidisciplinary research and training programme in cognitive neuroscience, transparently immersive experiences and artificial intelligence with a focus on neuro-business. From the research point of view, RHUMBO will produce tools and models to predict human decision-making in business environments. RHUMBO will use mixed reality technologies (MRT) together with different biometric signals (fMRI, fNIRS, eye tracking, EEG, etc.), supported by artificial intelligence processing techniques, to examine consumer behavioural patterns during dynamic, complex and realistic situations for a deeper understanding of internal consumer psychological states. With this purpose, RHUMBO’s partnership aggregates relevant scientific staff from the academic and corporate worlds which will be involved in a high-level personalised training programme that will guarantee ESRs and future PhD students outstanding Career Opportunities in the consumer behaviour sector and beyond. RHUMBO will disseminate results to a wide spectrum of stakeholders, create awareness in the general public about neuroscience and encourage neuroscience vocational careers among young students.

Recent international reports emphasize that the first three years of children’s life have more impact on their future outcomes than any other period during life. It is therefore essential that we have a thorough understanding of early social and cognitive development. In the past, experimental research that has fed our knowledge on early development studied infants within restricted, artificial laboratory contexts. However, only by studying children who are actively engaging in natural interaction with their social and physical environment, we can acquire ecologically valid, robust information about their social and cognitive development. It is thus essential to move experimental infancy research towards more natural situations. In doing so, MOTION will train a new generation of highly-skilled experts in the field of early development. New advances in wearable and wireless technologies now provide us with a unique opportunity. We are able to literally "unleash" the children we study – to free them from cables and constraints associated with the previous research methods. The primary scientific aim of the MOTION project thus is to leverage these new technological advances to study infants’ and toddlers’ body movements, gaze direction, and brain activity as they spontaneously and actively explore the world around them. MOTION will develop, produce and commercialize new tools to study early development in close cooperation between industry and academic partners. Innovative research tools will be used to investigate infants in natural interaction with their social and physical environment and gain a deeper understanding of early development. In addition to disseminating the new tools and research findings among the scientific community, it is the explicit aim of MOTION to reach out to professionals and the public, educate them about early development and instigate an open dialogue between professionals working with young children and developmental researchers.

INFANS will train 15 ESRs with background from basic to clinical sciences in multiple aspects of neonatal brain monitoring. The need for a coordinated research training programme in neonatal brain monitoring arises from i) the severe shortage of clinically viable means to high quality monitor the brain function in infancy, crucial to prevent later life neurological, cognitive and motor impairment and ii) the lack of well-educated PhDs in this field. Through their individual research projects, encompassing technological innovation, industrial development, clinical validation, identification of neonatal healthcare needs, the INFANS ESRs will develop a novel platform for high quality, clinically-viable EEG-NIRS monitoring accessible worldwide. Excellent science, industrial leadership and societal challenge are merged in INFANS: 6 academic and 4 non-academic partner from 6 EU countries, among which leading universities, industries, clinical institutions, share complementary expertise and facilities to provide international, interdisciplinary and intersectoral research training and mobility that will complement local doctoral training. Well-targeted visits and secondments, soft skills and dynamic training activities, an Open Science strategy, extensive involvement of ESRs in the network events organization, extensive contacts with other research, training and industrial European networks, dissemination activities and the award of Double doctoral degrees are further assets of INFANS. The ESRs will learn to transform a scientific/technological challenge into a product of socio-economic relevance, as the INFANS functional neuro-monitoring system will reduce the number of children with neurological, cognitive or motor dysfunctions associated with brain injuries at birth. The INFANS ESRs will become independent researchers with career prospects in both the academic and non-academic sectors, and will advance the EU capacity for innovation in biomedical engineering.