President Barack Obama proposed a multi-year program to map the human brain in an attempt to cure brain related diseases.
President Obama launched a $100 million program to study the body's most crucial and critical part, the brain, which carries more than 100 billion cells and trillions of connections. The BRAIN initiative will be a long term program to study the functions of the neurons in the brain that will help in curing diseases like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, autism, stroke and trauma.
BRAIN stands for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies.
The $100 million initial investment shall jumpstart the program but will require additional funding to meet all hopes of the President and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that is funding the initiative along with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Science Foundation, according to the Guardian report.
The new program will not only give hope to cure the deadly diseases, but also open new opportunities for jobseekers in scientific and technological fields. "As humans, we can identify galaxies light-years away," President Obama said during the launch of the program at the White House in Washington. "But we still haven't unlocked the mystery of the three pounds of matter that sits between our ears."
Obama asked all research organization, universities, foundations and all humanitarians to join hands to support the initiative and fight what is called one of today's greatest challenges.
"Imagine if no family had to feel helpless watching a loved one disappear behind the mask of Parkinson's, or struggle in the grip of epilepsy," Obama explained. "Imagine if we could reverse traumatic brain injury or PTSD for our veterans who are coming home. Imagine if someone with a prosthetic limb can now play the piano or throw a baseball as well as anybody else, because the wiring from the brain to that prosthetic is direct and triggered by what's already happening in the patient's mind."
The BRAIN initiative will require great development in technology to build tools that will capture the brain's neuron activity and its connections at a matching speed.
The NIH will be developing the working plan, milestones and expense chart, which will be presented in Obama's FY 2014 budget. Other private organizations that will partner with the NIH, DARPA and National Science Foundation include Allen Institute, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Kavli Foundation and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
