NIH www.nih.gov announced the first wave of investments totaling $46 million in FY 14 funds to support the “Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies” (BRAIN) initiative www.whitehouse.gov/share/trainbrain-initiative. More than 100 investigators in 15 states and several countries will work to develop new tools and technologies to understand neural circuit function and to capture a dynamic view of the brain in action.
These new tools and the deeper understanding achieved will ultimately catalyze new treatments and cures for devastating brain disorders and diseases that are estimated by the World Health Organization to affect more than one billion people worldwide.
“The human brain is the most complicated biological structure in the known universe. We’ve only just scratched the surface in understanding how it works or unfortunately doesn’t quite work when disorders and disease occur,” said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD.
Creating a wearable scanner to image the human brain in motion, using lasers to guide nerve cell firing, recording the entire nervous system in action, stimulating specific circuits with radio waves, and identifying complex circuits with DNA barcodes are among the 58 projects just announced.
The majority of the grants will focus on developing transformative technologies that will accelerate fundamental neuroscience research and include:
- Classifying the myriad cell types in the brain
- Producing tools and techniques for analyzing brain cells and circuits
- Creating next generation human brain imaging technology
- Developing methods for large scale recordings of brain activity
- Integrating experiments with theories and models to understand the functions of specific brain circuits.
Last year, President Obama launched the BRAIN Initiative as a large scale effort to provide researchers with fundamental insights necessary for treating a wide variety of brain disorders. NIH and three other federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation www.fda.gov FDA www.fda.gov, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency www.darpa.mil have stepped up to commit more than $110 million to the initiative for FY 2014.
NSF in the next year plans to issue a call for research to develop new strategies through their Ideas Labs. In addition, NSF plans to develop partnerships among academia, industry, and government to address the science and engineering of brain imaging.
FDA will holding a public workshop in November on Brain-Computer Interface Devices. FDA will use information and feedback from the workshop to develop an overall strategy to promote advances in the technology while maintaining appropriate patient protections.
For FY 15, DARPA plans to expand efforts to further develop their new ElectRx program. This program aims to develop new, minimally invasive neuro-technologies by the use of targeted stimulation of the nervous system to enhance the body and the brain’s ability to heal without surgery.