| Ten years after the Human Genome Project was completed, researchers are turning their focus to mapping the human brain with the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative. Drs. Ed Boydens and Craig Forest look to bring their skills and background to the project. |
By accelerating the development and application of innovative technologies, researchers will be able to produce a revolutionary new dynamic picture of the brain that, for the first time, shows how individual cells and complex neural circuits interact in both time and space.
Long desired by researchers seeking new ways to treat, cure, and even prevent brain disorders, this picture will fill major gaps in our current knowledge and provide unprecedented opportunities for exploring exactly how the brain enables the human body to record, process, utilize, store, and retrieve vast quantities of information, all at the speed of thought.
Dr. Ed Boyden, profiled in the CNN piece above, is an optogenetics Neuro- engineer and neuroscientist at MIT. Boyden is also anssociate member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research.
Boyden develops optogenetic tools enabling activation and silencing of neural circuit elements with light; 3-D microfabricated neural interfaces enabling control and readout of neural activity; and robotic methods to automatically record intracellular neural activity and performing single-cell analyses in the living brain.
His team already applies emerging neurotechnologies to analyze and engineer the circuits of the brain and to understand how cognition and emotion arise from brain network operation, and enabling systematic repair of brain disorders such as epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, PTSD, and chronic pain.
Boyden also launched an award-winning series of MIT classes teaching principles of neuroengineering from basic principles for control and observation of neural functions, culminating with neurotechnology start-up strategies.
He has a Stanford University Ph.D. in neuroscience, discovering that molecular mechanisms used to store a memory are determined by the content to be learned and has authored over 250 peer-reviewed papers, current or pending patents, and articles.
Boyden was named in Top 35 Innovators Under 35 by Technology Review, Top 20 Brains Under 40 by Discover Magazine, and received the NIH Director's New Innovator Award, the Society for Neuroscience Research Award for Innovation in Neuroscience, the NSF CAREER Award, the Paul Allen Distinguished Investigator Award, the New York Stem Cell Foundation-Robertson Investigator Award, the Perl/UNC prize, the IET Harvey Prize.
Also featured in the CNN piece, Dr. Craig Forest joined the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineeringas an Assistant Professor in August 2008. The Precision Biosystems Laboratory is focused on the creation and application of miniaturized, high-throughput, biological instrumentation to advance genetic science.
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| Dr. Craig Forest |
The development of instruments that can nimbly load,manipulate, and measure many biological samples—not only simultaneously, but also more sensitively, more accurately, and more repeatably than under current approaches—opens the door to essential, comprehensive biological system studies. This research leverages bioMEMS and its interplay with machine design, signal processing, optics, and manufacturing.
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MIT researcher Ed Boyden (left) and Georgia Tech researchers Suhasa Kodandaramaia (seated) and Craig Forest have developed a way to automate the process of finding and recording information from neurons in the living brain. Image Source: MIT |
Given the ambitious scope of the BRAIN project, the NIH is establishing a high level working group of the Advisory Committee to the NIH Director (ACD) to help shape this new initiative. This working group, co-chaired by Dr. Cornelia “Cori” Bargmann of The Rockefeller University and Dr. William Newsome from Stanford, is being asked to articulate the scientific goals of the BRAIN initiative and develop a multi-year scientific plan for achieving these goals, including timetables, milestones, and cost estimates.
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| Dr. Cornelia "Corri" Bargmann |
Dr. Bargmann received her undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the University of Georgia. She received her Ph.D. in 1987 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she worked under Robert A. Weinberg at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. She pursued a postdoctoral fellowship with H. Robert Horvitz, also at MIT, until 1991, when she accepted a faculty position at the University of California, San Francisco. She remained there until 2004, when she joined Rockefeller as the Torsten N. Wiesel Professor. Dr. Bargmann also is codirector of the Shelby White and Leon Levy Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior. She has been an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1995.
Dr. Bargmann is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She received the 2012 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, the 2012 NYU/Dart Biotechnology Achievement Award, the 2009 Richard Lounsbery Award from the U.S. and French National Academies of Sciences, the 2004 Dargut and Milena Kemali International Prize for Research in Basic and Clinical Neurosciences, the 2000 Charles Judson Herrick Award for comparative neurology, the 1997 Takasago Award for olfaction research and the 1997 W. Alden Spencer Award for neuroscience research.
William T. Newsome is a neuroscientist at Stanford University who works to "understand the neuronal processes that mediate visual perception and visually guided behavior." He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
As part of this planning process, input will be sought broadly from the scientific community, patient advocates, and the general public. The BRAIN working group's final report will be delivered to the NIH Director in June 2014.
Dr. Bargmann is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She received the 2012 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, the 2012 NYU/Dart Biotechnology Achievement Award, the 2009 Richard Lounsbery Award from the U.S. and French National Academies of Sciences, the 2004 Dargut and Milena Kemali International Prize for Research in Basic and Clinical Neurosciences, the 2000 Charles Judson Herrick Award for comparative neurology, the 1997 Takasago Award for olfaction research and the 1997 W. Alden Spencer Award for neuroscience research.
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| Dr. William Newsome |
As part of this planning process, input will be sought broadly from the scientific community, patient advocates, and the general public. The BRAIN working group's final report will be delivered to the NIH Director in June 2014.
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