NIH Accepts BRAIN Initiative Challenge

The National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins accepted the $4.5 billion long term brain research vision, called Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, which was presented by the Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD).

Calling the vision audacious and innovative, Collins said, “How the brain works and gives rise to our mental and intellectual lives will be the most exciting and challenging area of science in the 21st century. As a result of this concerted effort, new technologies will be invented, new industries spawned, and new treatments and even cures discovered for devastating disorders and diseases of the brain and nervous system.”

The ACD BRAIN Working Group report outlines a sustained commitment of $4.5 billion in federal financing to accomplish goals in brain research over the course of 10 years. Under the BRAIN Initiative, the NIH will map circuits of the brain, measure fluctuating patterns of electrical and chemical activity flowing within the circuits, and seek to better understand how the circuits’ interplay produces the unique cognitive and behavioral capabilities of humans. Some of the scientific goals identified as high priority for the BRAIN initiative are:

• Identify and provide experimental access to the different brain cell types to determine their roles in health and disease
• Generation of circuit diagrams that vary in resolution from synapses to the whole brain
• Production of a dynamic picture of the functioning brain through development and implementation of improved methods for large-scale monitoring of neural activity
• Connection of brain activity to behavior using precise interventional tools that change neural circuit dynamics
• Establishment of conceptual foundations to understand the biological basis of mental processes through development of new theoretical and data analysis tools

The initiative will maximize the goals through seven core principles, which include pursuing human studies and non-human models in parallel studies and crossing boundaries in interdisciplinary collaborations, among others.

Collins said, “As the Human Genome Project did with precision medicine, the BRAIN Initiative promises to transform the way we prevent and treat devastating brain diseases and disorders while also spurring economic development.”