'What Obama was talking about was, 'Let’s invent the next level of tools that enable us to look at the brain with a much higher level of resolution.''īetween individual neurons. 'When we see something light up, it’s representing tens of thousands of cells,' says Marcus. 'The Human Connectome Project produces images at one resolution, using real-world technologies that exist today,' explains Daniel Marcus, an investigator with one branch of the HCP who also heads the Neuroinformatics Research Group at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. In fact, its results may primarily illuminate the brains of fruit flies and zebrafish.īRAIN, the acronym, stands for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies the name is fitting, say researchers, because the effort's real focus may be on developing new imaging tools that let scientists look at the brain in new ways. However, unless there are stunning and unanticipated breakthroughs in brain imaging over the next few years, the BRAIN Initiative won't result in a comprehensive map of the roughly 86 billion neurons in the human brain and the trillions of connections between them.

In his announcement, Obama compared the neuroscience initiative to the Human Genome Project that finished sequencing the entire human genome a decade ago this month. government is already funding a similar $40-million venture called the Human Connectome Project, even the HCP scientists say the new program can fill gaps in current research. Obama's 2014 budget proposal will include $100 million to jumpstart this 'big science' initiative, which builds on researchers' interest in understanding the neural circuits that are activated when we perceive, think, and act. On Tuesday, after weeks of buzz in the neuroscience community, President Obama announced the BRAIN Initiative to map activity and connections within the brain.

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