Obama: Requests NIH Launch 10-Year $3 Bil. Brain Activity Project

[MishMash]

Alzheimers, Parkinsons, MS, a many other neuro-immune illnesses are threatening to swamp the U.S. medical system, especially as the babyboomers get older. By 2020, there will be 80 million people over the age of 65 in this country. The rates of dementia, disability, invalidism will skyrocket. (I put CFS/FM right smack in the middle of these illnesses , in case you were wondering why I was posting this.)

President Obama has suggested a huge new NIH project aimed at mapping the brain's function, patterned after the success of the Human Genome Project. We may finally be getting somewhere. My comment here, "Thank God, the right man won the election." If this is "big government" then please, give me more of it!

The Scientist»

• The Nutshell

Obama to Back Brain Mapping

A new project to map the activity of the human brain could receive more than $3 billion dollars in federal funds in President Obama’s upcoming budget proposal.

A large-scale effort to understand the human brain and build a comprehensive map of its activity is set to launch with the help of billions of dollars in federal funds. According to the New York Times, President Obama will outline the plan to fund the decade-long Brain Activity Map project in his federal budget proposal, which the White House is slated to release next month. Scientists involved in planning the project hope that it will have the same catalytic effect on brain research as the $3.8 billion Human Genome Project had on genetics, and that it will spur the development of new therapies for various brain diseases.

The White House Office for Science and Technology Policy did not comment on the speculation, but several scientists and institutions, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), confirmed their involvement in planning the project. Indeed, Obama may have been teasing the new project during his recent State of the Union address, when he cited brain research as the kind of science in which government should invest. And NIH director Francis Collins may have accidently confirmed as much immediately after the speech when he tweeted, “Obama mentions #NIH Brain Activity Map in #SOTU.”

Harvard molecular biologist George Church, who is part of the planning team, told the Times that the scientists behind the initiative hope to get federal backing to the tune of more than $3 billion over ten years. Church also pointed out that the initiative, if successful, could provide an economic boost, echoing Obama’s message that every dollar invested into human genome mapping returned $140 to the US economy.

The project will take advantage of emerging technologies that allow scientists to simultaneously record the electrical activity of large groups of individual neurons. In June last year, a group of researchers that included Church proposed pursuing several new approaches, such as the creation of molecule-size machines to noninvasively measure and record the activity of brain cells.

The Brain Activity Map project will also receive assistance from private foundations and companies like Google and Microsoft, who were present at a January 17 planning meeting at the California Institute of Technology, according to the Times. Attendees of that meeting determined that existing computing facilities are capable of capturing and analyzing the vast amounts of data that the project would generate

 

[snowathlete]

thanks for reporting MishMash, looks a great idea.

 

[Ember]

We may finally be getting somewhere.

Alivisatos et al. wrote: “Not least, we might expect novel understanding and therapies for diseases such as schizophrenia and autism.”

 

[*GG*]

Best of luck to all of us, wonder where we are going to get that money from? Like we are swimming in it! LOL

GG

 

[Waverunner]

George M. Church, a molecular biologist at Harvard, said he was helping to plan the project, the Brain Activity Map.

Great news.