New initiative: to map brain!

From here.

 

President Obama has unveiled the BRAIN Initiative, which the White House describes as "a bold new research effort to revolutionise our understanding of the human mind".

The BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) aims to uncover new ways to treat, prevent and cure brain disorders like Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, autism, epilepsy and traumatic brain injury. It is being launched with an initial $100 million investment from the US National Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation.

The White House issued a statement saying that the BRAIN Initiative will "accelerate the development and application of new technologies that will enable researchers to produce dynamic pictures of the brain that show how individual brain cells and complex neural circuits interact at the speed of thought". It adds that "these technologies will open new doors to explore how the brain records, processes, uses, stores, and retrieves vast quantities of information and shed light on the complex links between brain function and behaviour".

The research will begin next year and the NIH is setting up a "high-level working group…to define detailed scientific goals" and developing a "multi-year scientific plan for achieving these goals, including timetables, milestones and cost estimates".

 

Let's find key words here: prevent and cure brain disorders like Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, autism, epilepsy and traumatic brain injury. Sure! The same mantra! I still remember the same key words for GENOME project which did not help AT ALL! And those $100m? What is that compared to GENOME project? Is it a joke?