Will the U.S. Commit to the Biggest Brain Science Project Ever?

On June 5th, a group of scientists working on the Obama administration’s Big Science initiative issued a report that asked for an additional $4.5 billion to fund their brain science research. If granted, the funding will support the largest brain science project ever undertaken.

The deliverable? An analysis of circuit wiring diagrams of hundreds or even thousands of healthy and diseased human brains. According to an article in the Scientific American, the scientists hope to develop tools for diagramming brain circuitry that currently “exist as either drawings on the back of a napkin or graduate student projects.” 

The diagrams could reveal patterns in neural activity that could help scientists better understand brain functions such as perception, cognition, and emotion - and even predict when a brain might develop psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases. By connecting the dots between neuronal structure and brain function, neuroscientists will ultimately be able to link brain activity to behavior.

In the report issued to the National Institutes of Health, scientists painted an even more futuristic picture of the implications of their research: controlling, to some extent, brain activity “with precise interventional tools that change neural circuit dynamics. By directly activating and inhibiting populations of neurons, neuroscience is progressing from observation to causation, and much more is possible.”

The timeline for a goal so significant seems relatively short: The “Brain 2025” researchers claim they can produce circuit diagrams in 10 years, which would put them well on the path to demonstrating—and perhaps manipulating—causality between brain activity and behavior. The Science of Learning community will follow developments in the Big Science brain project, and report if and how funding will further its goals.