As the White House Initiative Embraces BRAIN, Questions Linger

As the White House Initiative Embraces BRAIN, Questions Linger -

a lot of nerves. President Barack Obama is presented by Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, when BRAIN Initiative event in the east room of the White House April 2.

Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy

to neuroscientist Rafael Yuste, sitting in a room of the White House decorated yesterday listening to President Barack Obama heaps of praise and some 100 million on $ brain mapping initiative that helped the outbreak was a "light" experience. "I felt like the story," says the researcher, who works at Columbia University.

"There is this huge mystery waiting to be unlocked," Obama told the crowd packed East Room with leaders of the American neuroscience in a 12--Minute paean to research brain (probably the largest yet issued by a US president). By "giving scientists the tools they need to get a dynamic picture of the brain in action," he said, the new initiative will help scientists find a cure for the complex processes of the brain, such as traumatic brain injury and Parkinson's disease, and create jobs that "we have not even imagined yet. "

For high rhetoric, however, the White House has not provided many details on how the brain (Brain Research through the advancement Innovative neurotechnologies) initiative will accomplish its mission . and the lack of detail is worrying not only skeptics who claim that BRAIN target the wrong purpose and could undermine other efforts, but research also even some ardent defenders such as Yuste. the way the White House has packed and plans to fund and coordinate the initiative, they say, creates some discomfort.

"As the current proposal, it is still awfully vague, so it is difficult not to have some reserves, "said biophysicist Jeremy Berg of the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, who is a former director of the National Institute of General medical sciences at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

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Several years Yuste and other scientists originally pitched BRAIN to US government officials that the activity of the brain map, 10 years, $ 3 billion to develop tools nanotechnology, optogenetics, and synthetic biology that could measure "each peak of each neuron" in a neural circuit. in an article in 2012 in neuron , on the basis of meetings organized by the California company Oxnard, Kavli Foundation, Yuste and his colleagues have developed a plan to gradually progress to map the brain activity of simple model organisms such as fruit flies to map the brains of creatures which contain about 1 million neurons, such as the Etruscan shrew. human applications formulated as the ultimate goal, but not an immediate objective.

Since the idea was adopted by the White House, however, has changed considerably. The plan that Obama unveiled yesterday called BRAIN fund by three federal agencies and private foundations. Officials say the year 2014 at the request of the president's budget, which will be published on April 10, ask about:

• $ 40 million to the model of the NIH for research in neuroscience, a project that includes 15 institutes and centers

• $ 50 million to the Agency Defense Advanced research Projects for research that could improve treatment and diagnose combat-related conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, brain damage and memory loss

• $ 20 million for the National science Foundation (NSF ), to support research in the development of nanoscale sensors to record the activity of neural networks; information processing technology that can handle the flood of data generated by brain research; and a better understanding of the neural representation of thoughts, emotions, actions and memories

Four groups-private Allen Brain Science Institute, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Kavli Foundation and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies say that they will support the project by funding BRAIN related research institutions. (See this infographic for details.)

The initiative will be led by an NIH working group supported 15 neuroscientists, co-chaired by Cornelia Bargmann of Rockefeller University in New York and William Newsome of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.

Although this group will not release a detailed research spending plan later this year, BRAIN should put more emphasis on human applications than its original planners envisioned, says neuroscientist John Donoghue Brown University, one of two researchers at the Kavli-led effort that has been appointed to the Executive Committee BRAIN (neuroscientist Terrence Sejnowski of the Salk Institute are the others) .Human and animal research applications are now thinking as "rather a parallel series that effort, "said he, and the NIH Director Francis Collins confirms that human applications are of great interest." We do not want to waste time traveling to the science that has direct human applications, "he said at a press conference yesterday

This. change has created some problems. Yuste, for example, says that maintaining human benefits in mind is important, but wondered if original sharpness of the project on the development of the tool can be diluted if the NIH advisory panel is dominated by traditional neuroscientists, rather than a more interdisciplinary mixture of scientists, including nanoscience, optogeneticists and synthetic biologists. "Neither Bargmann or Newsome are tool builders, so it is a concern they pack the committee with users, rather than the tool builders," says Yuste, adding that he and some allies asking NIH to add members to the panel. "We ask for more technologists."

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only 2 months, Bargmann was skeptical about the project. "based on my conversations, there is great concern in the community neuroscience that sounds like a great project of central planning that will have resources outside the creative work, "she wrote in February 1 email to Science . "The project needs to make sense to those who care deeply about neurological disease and neuroscience, and we have not seen the leaders in these areas still involved." ( Science Insider has not been able to reach Bargmann for comment since she was appointed co-chair of the working group.)

Although Berg Pittsburgh was skeptical 10 years, $ 3 billion proposal brain Activity Map, "now that it has been somewhat reduced and focused on the development of technology, I feel much more comfortable with the project," he said. based on his experience at NIH, Berg said that emphasis on the development of technology is "a very good thing," because groups within the agency tend to fight with the development of new technologies "because they are" focused on this problem, they are trying to solve rather than the development of the technology itself. "

allows the system to be flexible and adapt over time is essential, he said. Bargmann and that Newsome is on the advisory group, "adds a lot of comfort for me." Although both are "spectacular contributors" to neuroscience, Berg said, they also have an overview of how to manage both small and large scientific projects.

Like any large project, the brain's success will ultimately depend on his leadership, Donoghue confirmed: "There are many people involved in this who have built careers running independent laboratories themselves. ... The question is whether they will all pull together in the same direction. "

Still unclear is whether the financing BRAIN will suck money out of other research efforts and if the $ 100 million will be followed by other investments coming years. "I understand that it comes from new money" not already allocated to research in neuroscience, said Donoghue. the first reaction Yuste to face was that it was "far too low" to achieve the original objectives of the project.

But "the money should be considered as something that can be built around, from which you can build forward" said Alan Leshner, CEO of AAAS (publisher of science Insider). "a time when funding is so tight in government," the support of the white House to research neuroscience is a "major opportunity" says Leshner, a former director of the NIH National Institute on drug abuse and Acting Director of the National Institute of mental health. " If the scientific community does not rise yet, shame on us. "

Although there is no predicting whether Congress approves the president's request," it has always been and there seems to be today the interest of both parties in this kind of innovative products research, "said white House Jay Carney yesterday during his daily briefing.

A top Republican leader in Congress has already expressed its support." the human brain mapping is exactly the type of research we should be funding, "said representative Eric Cantor (R-VA), the majority leader of the uS House of representatives, in a statement." It is great scientist. "

(Obama, meanwhile, joked in his speech that "without doubt my life would be easier" if scientists could map the brain. "It could explain all kinds of things going on in Washington. We could prescribe something . ")

despite their concerns, many scholars who laid the foundation of BRAIN are just happy to see at least part of their idea in progress. The evening before the president's announcement, Yuste and more than a dozen other colleagues involved in the effort met for dinner in downtown Washington, for what they described jokingly as their "Last Supper ". The sense of accomplishment was "bittersweet," said Yuste. They were happy that the Obama administration has adopted the project, he said, but now "it's out of our hands."

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