Obama Announces Multi-Million Dollar Research Initiative To Study Human Brain

US President Obama today announced a broad new research initiative to map, explore, and better understand the human brain while finding ways to treat brain-related diseases.

In a White House press briefing, Obama described the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative that will be initially funded with US$ 100 million from the president’s fiscal 2014 budget.

Three US government agencies will provide the initial US$ 100 million, according to a White House fact sheet. The agencies are: National Institutes of Health (US$ 40 million), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (US$ 50 million) and the National Science Foundation (US$ 20 million).

Private sector partners interested in neurological research are also providing annual financial support. These partners include: Allen Institute (US$ 60 million), Howard Hughes Medical Institute (US$ 30 million), Kavli Foundation (US$ 4 million), and Salk Institute for Biological Studies (US$ 28 million).

“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,” the White House statement said. “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 behavior.”

Obama said he hopes the funding will help researchers find new ways to treat, cure, and even prevent brain disorders and injuries, such as Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, autism, stroke, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“The BRAIN initiative will [give] scientists the tools they need to get a dynamic picture of the brain in action,” Obama told the briefing. “The most powerful computer in the world isn’t nearly as intuitive as the one we are born with.”

Economic Impact

The announcement comes in the midst of across-the-board federal spending cuts that began last month. However, Obama has demonstrated a renewed focus in areas of science, innovation, and R&D to fuel job creation and economic growth in the US (IPW, Education/ R&D/ Innovation, 13 February 2013).

“Ideas are what power our economy. It’s what sets us apart. It’s what America is all about,” Obama said. “We can’t afford to miss these opportunities while the rest of the world races ahead.”

National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins echoed Obama’s sentiments as he introduced the president before the briefing: “Investing in biomedical research is one of the wisest choices we can make as a nation. We can’t afford not to. The worst thing we can do in tough economic times is stifle innovation.”

Financial and Technical Limitations

The project will rely heavily on a high-level working group of fifteen neuroscientists co-chaired by Dr. Cornelia Bargmann from Rockefeller University and Dr. William Newsome of Stanford University. The “dream team”, as it is being called, will define specific strategies for investment and develop a multi-year plan for achieving these goals, Collins said in an on-record press call after the briefing. He expects the group to provide initial feedback “in the next few months” and deliver concrete goals by the summer of 2014.

Questions have been raised about whether US$ 100 million is enough to achieve the proposed objective of mapping the human brain and if the technologies exist to do so. Collins said the funding is a “pretty substantial commitment for a first year effort.” By comparison, he said, the Human Genome Project received only US$ 28 million in its first year.

Until recommendations are handed down from the expert group, “it will be difficult to say what the right budgetary support should be,” he commented. “But we think we can do a lot to get this off the ground.”

Collins added that technical capabilities required for the BRAIN project are “within the capabilities of the way information technology is going” and may even inform the design of next generation computation architecture.

When asked about how BRAIN data would be made public, Collins said he and the NIH firmly believe in making data accessible immediately but gave no specifics on how this information will be communicated.

The proposal for the BRAIN project was initially outlined in the journal Neuron in June 2012 and can be found here [pdf].