Obama seeks $100M for brain mapping

WASHINGTON - President Obama on Tuesday proposed an effort to map the brain's activity in unprecedented detail, as a step toward finding better ways to treat such conditions as Alzheimer's, autism, stroke, and traumatic brain injuries.

He asked Congress to spend $100 million next year to start a project to explore details of the brain, which contains 100 billion cells and trillions of connections.

That's a small investment for the federal government - less than a fifth of what NASA spends every year just to study the sun - but it's too early to see how Congress will react. In a statement, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) called the project "exactly the type of research we should be funding," but said funds already allocated should be diverted to pay for it.

Congressman Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.) said that it was too early to say how much money would flow here, but that "there's no possibility that our great institutions in Philadelphia are not going to be at the forefront."

Obama said the so-called BRAIN Initiative could create jobs and improve the lives of billions of people worldwide. "As humans, we can identify galaxies light-years away," he said. "But we still haven't unlocked the mystery of the three pounds of matter that sits between our ears."

BRAIN stands for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies. The idea, which Obama first proposed in his State of the Union address, would require the development of new technology that could record the electrical activity of individual cells and complex neural circuits in the brain "at the speed of thought," the White House said.

Obama wants the initial $100 million investment to support work at the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the National Science Foundation. He also wants private firms, universities, and philanthropists to collaborate with federal agencies.

An NIH working group, cochaired by Cornelia Bargmann of the Rockefeller University and William Newsome of Stanford University, would define the goals and costs of a multiyear plan.

Brain scientists not involved in the project were upbeat. "This is spectacular," said David Fitzpatrick, CEO of the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience in Jupiter, Fla.

The focus on tracking activity in individual cells could lead to new treatments for many disorders such as schizophrenia, Parkinson's, depression, epilepsy, and autism.

"We're at this really transformative time," added Frances Jensen, an epilepsy expert who left Harvard last summer to run the University of Pennsylvania's neurology department.

Penn is "well positioned" to receive some of the new funding due to its emphasis on integrating scientists from different disciplines, including engineering and medicine, said Jensen, who attended the president's announcement.