Brain Tech Projects Get $46 Million in Funding

[Buster's Uncle]

Obama's BRAIN initiative awards $46 million in grants
Reuters
By Julie Steenhuysen  2 hours ago



U.S. President Barack Obama announces his administration's Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative at the White House in Washington, April 2, 2013. REUTERS/Jason Reed



CHICAGO (Reuters) - Wearable brain scanners and lasers that can turn hundreds of cells on and off were among 58 projects awarded $46 million in federal grants as part of President Obama's $100 million initiative to unlock the secrets of the human brain.

Launched in 2013, the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative is designed to give scientists greater insight into how the healthy brain works and a better understanding of what systems go awry in diseases ranging from Alzheimer's to schizophrenia.

"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 Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the federal agency distributing the $46 million in grants.

He likened the funding to his involvement in the early days of the Human Genome Project, the program that uncovered the precise sequence of 3 billion molecules common to the vast majority of humans' DNA.

The grants represent the NIH's portion of the BRAIN Initiative. It is one of four federal agencies committing more than $110 million in fiscal 2014 spending. In addition to the NIH, the agencies include the National Science Foundation, the Food and Drug Administration and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Winners of the NIH grants were selected from a pool of more than 600 applicants. The grants will support the work of 100 investigators.

Most of the projects focus on developing new tools to help answer basic questions about the brain, including classifying the myriad cell types in the brain and developing new methods to record brain activity and integrate that into fundamental theories of the brain.

"There's a big gap between what we want to do in brain research and the technologies available to make exploration possible. These initial awards are part of a 12-year scientific plan focused on developing the tools and technologies needed to make the next leap in understanding the brain," Collins said.

The White House is hosting a conference on the BRAIN Initiative later on Tuesday where new federal and private sector commitments will be unveiled.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; editing by Andrew Hay)


http://news.yahoo.com/obamas-brain-initiative-awards-46-175923914.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Brain Tech Projects Get $46 Million in Funding
LiveScience.com
By Bahar Gholipour, Staff Writer  5 hours ago



A focus of the first years of the BRAIN Initiative is the development of new tools for exploring how neural activity in the brain control thoughts, feelings and movements.



Developing wearable brain scanners and devising tools to watch a brain's signaling chemicals in real time are among the 58 research projects that now have funding, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced today (Sept. 30).

These and other projects received the first wave of funding in the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, the U.S. government's plan to develop the technologies needed to map the human brain.

The NIH awarded $46 million in grants to these projects, which will focus on developing "transformative technologies" that can help scientists gain a deeper understanding of the brain, NIH Director Francis Collins told reporters today.

"There’s a big gap between what we want to do in brain research and the technologies available to make exploration possible," Collins said.

The 58 projects involve more than 100 researchers in several countries and fall into six categories, which include classifying brain cell types, devising tools to study them and tying their activity to brain functions such as thoughts, feelings and movement.

Some projects focus on using light and sound to affect neurons deep in the brain, while others aim to fine-tune the information that brain-imaging techniques can reveal.

"Some of the projects here have the ability to transform how we study the brain, and new technologies and industries will likely be spawned," Collins said.

Moreover, the new insights could ultimately lead to "new treatments and even cures discovered for devastating disorders and diseases of the brain," Collins said.

The BRAIN initiative will add to the existing research on individual brain diseases by studying the organ as a whole, said Cornelia Bargmann, a professor at Rockefeller University and a member of the working group planning the BRAIN initiative at the NIH.

"Our brains are not individual little parts. We have a coherent and unified perception of the world, the result from all of those parts working together," Bargmann said.

The initiative was launched in April 2013 by President Barack Obama. Four federal agencies — the NIH, the National Science Foundation, the Food and Drug Administration and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — committed more than $100 million to the Initiative for fiscal year 2014.

Later today, the Obama administration will make its own announcement about the progress made after the launch of the initiative, and the federal agencies, the universities and corporations that have recently joined the project.


http://news.yahoo.com/brain-tech-projects-46-million-funding-190849109.html