Obama Announces BRAIN Initiative

Obama has announced his latest project, the BRAIN Initiative. BRAIN is short for Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies. Hinting at this $100 million project (to start) in his State of the Union address, Obama pronounced: “If we want to make the best products, we also have to invest in the best ideas... Every dollar we invested to map the human genome returned $140 to our economy... Today, our scientists are mapping the human brain to unlock the answers to Alzheimer’s… Now is not the time to gut these job-creating investments in science and innovation. Now is the time to reach a level of research and development not seen since the height of the Space Race.”This "Next Great American Project" seeks to map the activity of the human brain. Not a small endeavor, which means there is no projected end. We know practically nothing about how the human brain works. As neurobiologist Lesile Vosshall tweeted when she heard about Obama's plans, "Baffled by the NIH Brain Activity Map Project. We don't understand the fly brain yet."Initially the project will focus on improving technologies to study the brain. What we have now simply cannot give us a picture of how the brain's 100 billion neurons work together.Putting the wisdom of spending money on such research in a time of sweeping budget cuts aside, this initiative may give us a better understanding of devastating conditions like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and schizophrenia. (I say "may&...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Biotechnology Source Type: blogs