Obama announces BRAIN initiative

President Obama announced on Tuesday a public-private partnership to give "scientists the tools they need to get a dynamic picture of the brain in action and better understand how we think and how we learn and how we remember." The White House budget request that is slated to be released next week will allocate $110 million in FY14 for the Brain Research through Application of Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative, including about $40 million from NIH, $50 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and about $20 million from the National Science Foundation. Additionally, the White House said external commitments include more than $60 million annually from the Allen Institute for Brain Science; more than $30 million annually from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; about $40 million over the next 10 years from the Kavli Foundation; and more than $28 million from the Salk Institute.

By this fall, a 15-member working group will release an interim report with goals for the initiative and a scientific plan for achieving them, including timetables and milestones. A final report is expected in June 2014. The group is co-chaired by Cornelia Bargmann of The Rockefeller University and William Newsome of Stanford University. The group also includes Eve Marder, a Brandeis University professor who has been critical of the project (see SciBX: Science-Business eXchange, March 7). ...