President Obama today announced the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative and an anticipated $100M of US government funding in the next fiscal year. That is part of several hundred million more committed by private partners and foundations to this project to better understand how the brain works.
http://www.nih.gov/science/brain/
NIH Director Francis Collins – “It aims to bring together nanoscience, engineering, and neurology to make sense of how the brain works—how those circuits in the brain allow us to do all the complicated things that we currently don’t understand.”
There is a lot to understand and while we love the focus on the basic science of the brain – we anxiously await, and hope to contribute to, the goals of this project. And we can’t forget the European Commission’s €1bn award to their Human Brain Project.
http://www.publicserviceeurope.com/article/3011/graphene-and-brain-projects-win-1bn-eu-competition
What do you think? How would you like to see all of this support work together?
Not everyone is pleased: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/02/president-obama-brain-mapping-project-not-ideal