open-discussion
open-discussion > NITRC and the BRAIN...
Apr 5, 2013 03:04 PM | Dave Kennedy
NITRC and the BRAIN...
Almost everyone has seen the recent announcement by the US
president regarding the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing
Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative (i.e. http://govne.ws/item/Fact-Sheet-BRAIN-In...). Summarizing from that link we see that:
This announcement has prompted lots of individuals and organizations to state a 'position' with respect to the new initiative, so I take this opportunity to to start a dialogue within the NITRC community on this topic.
First, since the actual plans for what the BRAIN Initiative will actually be are still a work in progress, it is impossible to take a position with respect to this initiative with any true certainty. One can imagine better and worse scenarios that might emerge, but, ultimately, additional resources being added to Neuroscience research should be a good thing.
What is true however, regardless of how the politics and finances of that specific initiative turn out, is that any initiative aimed at "... help[ing] researchers find new ways to treat, cure, and even prevent brain disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, and traumatic brain injury", weather using existing monies and programs or new ones, will be involving core technologies that fall well within the overall NITRC mission to serve the resource support, data dissemination and computational needs of neuroobservation (i.e. MRI, EEG, MEG, ECoG, Optical, microscopy, etc.).
While much talk about the new initiative seems to center on the development of new tools that fill the gap between existing technologies of limited cellular recording and macroscopic techniques such as MRI, these new 'gap technologies' will have the same needs and likely fall under the existing scope that NITRC already serves. Success in the BRAIN Initiative (as proposed) or even the natural evolution of the existing neuroscience endeavors, will definitely push the frontiers of new tools, shared data, big data, and advanced, distributed, and scalable computational infrastructures that will be needed to acquire, process and 'understand' this ever expanding set of observations.
This new 'national dialog' on neuroscience as prompted by the BRAIN Initiative proposal serves well to remind us just exactly how important our general neuroinformatics infrastructures are as a foundation to the 'World Trade Center' amount of information that will sit on top of it as we seek the ultimate goal of understanding how the brain works.
"The BRAIN Initiative ultimately aims to help
researchers find new ways to treat, cure, and even prevent brain
disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, and traumatic
brain injury.
The BRAIN Initiative will accelerate the development and application of new technologies that will enable researchers to produce dynamic pictures of the brain that show how individual brain cells and complex neural circuits interact at the speed of thought. These technologies will open new doors to explore how the brain records, processes, uses, stores, and retrieves vast quantities of information, and shed light on the complex links between brain function and behavior.
This initiative is one of the Administration's "Grand Challenges" – ambitious but achievable goals that require advances in science and technology. In his remarks today, the President called on companies, research universities, foundations, and philanthropists to join with him in identifying and pursuing the Grand Challenges of the 21st century."
The BRAIN Initiative will accelerate the development and application of new technologies that will enable researchers to produce dynamic pictures of the brain that show how individual brain cells and complex neural circuits interact at the speed of thought. These technologies will open new doors to explore how the brain records, processes, uses, stores, and retrieves vast quantities of information, and shed light on the complex links between brain function and behavior.
This initiative is one of the Administration's "Grand Challenges" – ambitious but achievable goals that require advances in science and technology. In his remarks today, the President called on companies, research universities, foundations, and philanthropists to join with him in identifying and pursuing the Grand Challenges of the 21st century."
This announcement has prompted lots of individuals and organizations to state a 'position' with respect to the new initiative, so I take this opportunity to to start a dialogue within the NITRC community on this topic.
First, since the actual plans for what the BRAIN Initiative will actually be are still a work in progress, it is impossible to take a position with respect to this initiative with any true certainty. One can imagine better and worse scenarios that might emerge, but, ultimately, additional resources being added to Neuroscience research should be a good thing.
What is true however, regardless of how the politics and finances of that specific initiative turn out, is that any initiative aimed at "... help[ing] researchers find new ways to treat, cure, and even prevent brain disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, and traumatic brain injury", weather using existing monies and programs or new ones, will be involving core technologies that fall well within the overall NITRC mission to serve the resource support, data dissemination and computational needs of neuroobservation (i.e. MRI, EEG, MEG, ECoG, Optical, microscopy, etc.).
While much talk about the new initiative seems to center on the development of new tools that fill the gap between existing technologies of limited cellular recording and macroscopic techniques such as MRI, these new 'gap technologies' will have the same needs and likely fall under the existing scope that NITRC already serves. Success in the BRAIN Initiative (as proposed) or even the natural evolution of the existing neuroscience endeavors, will definitely push the frontiers of new tools, shared data, big data, and advanced, distributed, and scalable computational infrastructures that will be needed to acquire, process and 'understand' this ever expanding set of observations.
This new 'national dialog' on neuroscience as prompted by the BRAIN Initiative proposal serves well to remind us just exactly how important our general neuroinformatics infrastructures are as a foundation to the 'World Trade Center' amount of information that will sit on top of it as we seek the ultimate goal of understanding how the brain works.
Threaded View
| Title | Author | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Dave Kennedy | Apr 5, 2013 | |
| sunho chang | Apr 10, 2013 | |