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President Barack Obama has unveiled a new initiative to map the brain.
Speaking at
the White House, he announced an initial $100m investment to shed light on how
the brain works and provide insight into diseases such as Alzheimer's and
epilepsy.
President
Obama said initiatives like the Human Genome Project had transformed genetics;
now he wants to do the same with the brain.
The project
will be carried out by both public and private-sector scientists.
The project
is called Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies - or
BRAIN.
Mr Obama
said: "There is this enormous mystery waiting to be unlocked, and the
BRAIN initiative will change that by giving scientists the tools they need to
get a dynamic picture of the brain in action and better understand how we think
and learn and remember. And that knowledge will be transformative."
Next
frontier
We can't
afford to miss these opportunities while the rest of the world races ahead”
The $100m
investment will be used to develop new technologies to investigate how the
billions of individual cells in the human brain interact.
Scientists
will also focus on how the brain records, stores and processes information, and
investigate how brain function is linked to behaviour.
Mr Obama
said that while our understanding of the brain was growing, there was still a
long way to go.
"As
humans we can identify galaxies light years away, we can study particles
smaller than the atom, but we still haven't unlocked the mystery of the 3lb of
matter that sits between our ears," he said.
The project
will also involve partnerships with the private sector.
This
includes the Allen Institute for Brain Science, which has committed to spending
$60m annually on projects relating to the BRAIN initiative, and the Salk
Institute for Biological Studies, which has dedicated $28m.
An ethics
committee will oversee the work.
Mr Obama
said that it was worth investing in science, claiming that it would help to
create new jobs and boost the economy.
He said
that basic research was "a driver of growth".
"We
can't afford to miss these opportunities while the rest of the world races
ahead," he added.
The funding
announcement comes after recent news of another push in neuroscience in Europe.
About 80
European research institutions and some from outside the EU will take part in
the Human Brain Project, which is estimated to cost more than 1bn euros.
The project
will use supercomputer-based models and simulations to reconstruct a virtual
human brain to develop new treatments for neurological conditions.
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