Digital Twins in Neuroscience

The term digital twins appeared in a 1993 book by David Gelernter entitled Mirror Worlds: Or the Day Software Puts the Universe in A Shoebox. How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean . In one sentence, digital twins are "precise, virtual copies of machines or systems" (Tao and Qi, 2019). In more detail, they are "sophisticated computer models" that "mirror almost every facet of a product, process or service" and can be constantly updated by data collected from sensors in real time (Tao and Qi, 2019). Such twins allow not only visualization but also experimentation and forecasting of future scenarios (Wickramasinghe et al., 2022) from micro to macro. They first emerged in engineering to test products, but they have now been piloted to sketch solutions and preempt problems in many contexts, from logistic management to global warming. Energy companies employ digital twins to track the operations of wind turbines, and NASA has been using digital copies (i.e., of spacecraft to monitor their status) since the 1960s (Dang et al., 2023). Singapore is the first country in the world to have a digital twin copy of itself, street by street. Dynamic bidirectional mapping is one of the key aspects of digital twins, which can collect real-world data and allow simulations of physical entities in real time (Wickramasinghe et al., 2022), along with their analytical and predictive capability (Katsoulakis et al., 2024). Among the many areas in which they have been piloted is medicine, including cardiology, dermatology, geriatrics, infective disorders, internal medicine, oncology, orthopedics, and radiology specialities. We are now closer to Mirror Worlds becoming a neuro-reality more than ever, as digital twins have also entered the neuroscience realm (Fig. 1). Multiple sclerosis, one of the most common causes of neurological disability … Correspondence should be addressed to Stefano Sandrone at sandrone.stefano{at}gmail.com.