The research community wasn't sure what to expect when President Obama first announced his plans for a public-private BRAIN Initiative in April. With the release of an interim report on Monday, an NIH work group has laid out some initial goals of the project.
Short for Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, the collaborative project should focus on how complex neural circuits interact, rather than on the entire brain, the working group recommends in its report. Figuring out how these circuits are hardwired is rich in opportunity, with potential for advances in treating a whole range of diseases, such as psychiatric disorders, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, the report says.
"New treatments for devastating brain diseases are likely to emerge from a deeper understanding of brain circuits," the working group members write.
The report identifies 9 high-priority research areas for 2014, the first year of the project, including generating a census of brain cell types, creating structural maps of the brain, developing new neural network recording capabilities and linking neuronal activity to behavior.
In April, President Obama called for a total of $110 million in the 2014 fiscal year budget to support the effort, $40 million of which is expected to be allocated by NIH. NIH spends about $5.5 billion on neuroscience research. In 2014, funding for BRAIN will amount to less than 1% of NIH's total neuroscience budget. Additional funding is expected to come from the project's government collaborators, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation. Private partners include the Allen Institute for Brain Science, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Kavli Foundation.
The working group will deliver a full report in June 2014 after receiving public comment.
- read the interim report (PDF)
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