On Tuesday, President Obama announced a new research initiative that will revolutionize human understanding of our own brains: the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies--a.k.a., BRAIN-- Initiative.
Obama laid the groundwork for this new program in his 2013 State of the Union address. It is part of his overall plan for creating jobs and rebuilding the American middle class. He compares it to the Human Genome Project, which produced the first-ever "working draft" of the human DNA sequence in 2000 and grew into a domestic biotechnology industry worth nearly $1 trillion and generating hundreds of thousands of jobs.
“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.” -- Barack Obama, February 12, 2013
Consider the possibilities. Life without the dull sword of dementia hovering over our final years. Cures for epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, and potentially lethal infections like encephalitis. Mending concussions, and diminishing the shaking and seizing that cripple or kill millions of people every year.
Someone conceptualized such a world just a year and a half ago at a London meeting of neuroscientists and nanoscientists--Miyoung Chun, a molecular biologist and vice president of Kavli Foundation. She saw the promise of interdisciplinary research and a project that could awaken the human imagination.
"The more than 100 billion nerve cells [the same order of magnitude as the number of stars in the Milky Way] and trillion supporting cells that make up your brain and mine constitute the most elaborate structure in the known universe," Joel Davis, medical writer and Cognitive, Neural, and Biomolecular Program Officer for the Office of Naval Research, said 15 years ago in Mapping the Mind. President Obama decided to run with Dr. Chun's remarkable concept of mapping the three-pound miracle of gray matter that Davis described.
Benefits not only patients, but also commerce and the economy
Researchers implementing the expected 15-year brain initiative could accelerate the development and application of new technologies that can be turned into real-world business opportunities while improving the overall health of millions. The BRAIN Initiative is expected to help science and health professionals find new ways to treat, cure, and even prevent brain disorders like stroke, autism, Parkinson's disease, MS, ALS, brain and spinal cord cancers, dementia, and Alzheimer's.
If we want to help people afflicted by neurological diseases by improving diagnosis and treatments, we need to record signals from brain cells in much greater numbers and at even faster speeds than we have to date. We need to break through other obstacles in our current science. To achieve these goals, rapidly emerging fields of science and engineering such as nanoscience, imaging, and informatics must integrate with and push us beyond our current knowledge.
The new program should enable scientists to determine how individual brain cells and complex neural circuits interact at the amazing speed of thought. It will delve into how the brain records, processes, uses, stores, and retrieves massive amounts of information over a lifetime. We can use this knowledge practically to implement new strategies for keeping our brains healthy, treat traumatic brain injuries, and mitigate damage that has already started or is likely to occur for genetic reasons. Along with the hard science, the BRAIN initiative will actively address the ethical implications of the program's advances in neuroscience.
Key government and private investments
The BRAIN Initiative includes key investments to jumpstart the effort from three federal agencies:
- National Institutes of Health: $40 million.
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency: $50 million.
- National Science Foundation: $20 million.
These funds are already included in the FY 2014 budget. Other important elements of the program:
- Strong academic leadership led by Dr. Cori Bargmann (The Rockefeller University) and Dr. William Newsome (Stanford University);
- Public-private partnerships: Federal research agencies, companies, foundations, and private institutions (such as the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies) all investing in neuroscience research; and
- Maintaining our highest ethical standards through the Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.
Many leading private-sector partners have committed support to the BRAIN Initiative that already exceeds the total federal investment. They include the following:
- The Allen Institute for Brain Science: Began a ten-year project to understand the neural code last year; more than $60M annually.
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute: At least $30 million annually to support projects related to this initiative.
- Kavli Foundation: $4 million dollars per year over the next ten years.
- Salk Institute for Biological Studies: Over $28 million.
The BRAIN Initiative's promise
“The goal here is a whole new playing field, whole new ways of thinking,” Dr. Newsome has said. “We are really out to catalyze a paradigm shift.” And where?
"[In] that shiny mound of being, that mouse-gray parliament of cells, that dream factory, that petit tyrant inside a ball of bone, that huddle of neurons calling all the plays, that little everywhere, that fickle pleasuredome, that wrinkled wardrobe of selves stuffed into the skull like too many clothes into a gym bag....--Diane Ackerman
By investing a relatively small $100 million now (as opposed to the $3.8 billion spent on the genome map over 13 years, with its subsequent 140-times return), Obama is betting on the nation reaping similarly high rewards from the BRAIN Initiative. Other examples of unexpected popular return on various federal investments are the Apollo program, which brought us life-changing innovations (GPS, CAT scans, better solar panels, and advanced defense technologies)," and the Hubble space telescope, with its unprecedented focus on the universe. Even the National Institutes of Health, often a recipient of scathing criticism from fiscal conservatives, returns to the American economy twice as much as it receives from our tax dollars.
Taking only one example of the need for brain research, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calculated that the mortality rate from Alzheimer's disease has jumped 68% between 2000 and 2010. Health care costs associated with the increase were $200 billion in 2012 alone, including $140 billion in government insurance programs.
If the trend continues--and it will likely accelerate as the large baby boom generation ages--the costs could top $1 trillion by 2050.
Based in Chicago, Sandy Dechert has been covering health for Examiner.com since the webzine's official startup. She has followed the creation and progress of health care legislation, including the Affordable Care Act of 2010, over the past 20 years. Her work also includes other top health stories, such as H7N9 avian flu developments in March and April.
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