Brain Mapping Project

[migtig]

Excerpt:
President Barack Obama is asking Congress to spend $100 million next year to start a new project to map the human brain in hopes of eventually finding cures for diseases like Alzheimer's.

Obama says the so-called BRAIN Initiative could create jobs and unlock the mysteries of the brain. That could eventually lead to cures to ailments including Parkinson's and autism and help reverse the effect of a stroke or other traumatic injuries. It also hopes to lead to treatments for traumatic injuries and disorders like Alzheimer's disease and epilepsy.

Obama proposes $100M brain mapping project

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Though I personally think a project like this is way past due, I do not concur that at this particular time of fiscal crisis that the government should be involved.

 

[hotcoffee]

Is this a funded study? I wonder what other pot will not be filled so he can fund this one.

I don't know how many people I've talked to lately who don't have medical insurance.... so they can't get tests like a colonoscopy that may save their lives. I don't know how many cancer studies have not been funded....

I really hope they are going to fund this brain mapping project. My mom had Alzheimer's.... it's a horrible disease... wasting the lives of those it attacks and breaking the lives of those who care for them.

I really hope this isn't just lip service... rhetoric....

 

[migtig]

Obama has asked Congress to fund it next year. However, since they can't pass a budget on time, who knows. :shrug:

However, the EU has a project ongoing right now that is fully funded (won a science research prize).

2 EU science projects win $1.3 billion each

Excerpt:
MAPPING THE BRAIN

The Human Brain Project will use supercomputers 1,000 times more powerful than those today to create the most detailed model ever of the human brain. Then the project plans to simulate the effects of drugs and treatments on the brain, for a better understanding of neurological diseases and related ailments.

In addition, the increased knowledge about how the brain works — and how it manages billions of processing units and trillions of synapses while consuming no more power than a light bulb — may lead to "a paradigm shift for computing," the European Commission, the European Union's executive branch, said in a statement.

"The economic and industrial impact of such a shift is potentially enormous," the Commission said.

The leader of the project, Henry Markram, a professor of neuroscience at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale of Lausanne in Switzerland, said earlier this month that it could not be undertaken without this kind of funding.

"The pharmaceutical industry won't do this, computing companies won't do this — there's too much fundamental science," Markram said. "This is one project which absolutely needs public funding."