Obama Administration To Announce BRAIN Grand Challenge Project Today

 Neuroscience  

DARPA, the US National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation will be involved in the Brain Activity Map project which is to be announced today.  Now known as the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, or BRAIN, the project has been designated a grand challenge of the 21st century by the Obama administration.

US President Barack Obama will announce today specifics on the Brain Activity Map project, The New York Times is reporting. The initiative, which will now officially be known as Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, or BRAIN, has been designated a grand challenge of the 21st century by the Obama administration.

The broad new neuroscience research initiative will begin with  $100 million in funding for  2014, and is intended to invent and refine new technologies to understand the human brain, senior administration officials said Monday.

Three government agencies will be involved: the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Science Foundation.

A working group at the NIH, described by the officials as a “dream team,” and led by Cori Bargmann of Rockefeller University and William Newsome of Stanford University, will be charged with coming up with a plan, a time frame, specific goals and cost estimates for future budgeting.

Cori Bargmann of Rockefeller University will co-lead a study of the brain in action.
Image Source: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Brain researchers can now insert wires in the brain of animals, or sometimes human beings, to record the electrical activity of brain cells called neurons, as they communicate with each other. But, Dr. Newsome said, they can record at most hundreds at a time.

New technology would need to be developed to record thousands or hundreds of thousands of neurons at once. And, Dr. Newsome said, new theoretical approaches, new mathematics and new computer science are all needed to deal with the amount of data that will be garnered.

As part of the initiative, the president will require a study of the ethical implications of these sorts of advances in neuroscience.

The effort will require the development of new tools not yet available to neuroscientists and, eventually, perhaps lead to progress in treating diseases like Alzheimer’s and epilepsy and traumatic brain injury. It will involve both government agencies and private institutions.

It has also been postulated that the BRAIN project could even help determine what the biological roots of concsiousness are.



SOURCE  New York Times

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