The U.S. President Barack Obama's ambitious plan to map the circuitry of the human brain called Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (or just BRAIN) will be kicking off with $100 million in 2014.
With a map of the brain, scientists might finally understand and, maybe, find treatments for diseases like Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, autism,epilepsy and traumatic injuries and PTSD. Collectively, these brain conditions affect 100 million Americans and cost $ 500 billion a year.
According to Obama , the so-called BRAIN Initiative could create jobs and eventually lead to answers to ailments including Parkinson’s and autism and help reverse the effect of a stroke. The president told scientists that the research has the potential to improve the lives of billions of people worldwide.
“As humans we can identify galaxies light-years away,” Obama said. “We can study particles smaller than an atom, but we still haven’t unlocked the mystery of the three pounds of matter that sits between our ears.”
The idea, which Obama first proposed in his State of the Union address, would require the development of new technology that can record the electrical activity of individual cells and complex neural circuits in the brain “at the speed of thought,” the White House said.
Obama wants the initial $100 million investment to support research at the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation. He also wants private companies, universities and philanthropists to partner with the federal agencies in support of the research. And he wants a study of the ethical, legal and societal implications of the research.
The goals of the work are unclear at this point. A working group at NIH, co-chaired by Cornelia "Cori" Bargmann of The Rockefeller University and William Newsome of Stanford University, would work on defining the goals and develop a multi-year plan to achieve them that included cost estimates.