The BRAIN Initiative: developing technology to catalyse neuroscience discovery

Lyric A Jorgenson; William T Newsome; David J Anderson; Cornelia I Bargmann; Emery N Brown; Karl Deisseroth; John P Donoghue; Kathy L Hudson; Geoffrey S F Ling; Peter R MacLeish; Eve Marder; Richard A Normann; Joshua R Sanes; Mark J Schnitzer; Terrence J Sejnowski; David W Tank; Roger Y Tsien; Kamil Ugurbil; John C Wingfield

doi:10.1098/rstb.2014.0164

The BRAIN Initiative: developing technology to catalyse neuroscience discovery

Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2015 May 19;370(1668):20140164. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2014.0164.

Authors

Lyric A Jorgenson¹, William T Newsome², David J Anderson³, Cornelia I Bargmann⁴, Emery N Brown⁵, Karl Deisseroth⁶, John P Donoghue⁷, Kathy L Hudson⁸, Geoffrey S F Ling⁹, Peter R MacLeish¹⁰, Eve Marder¹¹, Richard A Normann¹², Joshua R Sanes¹³, Mark J Schnitzer¹⁴, Terrence J Sejnowski¹⁵, David W Tank¹⁶, Roger Y Tsien¹⁷, Kamil Ugurbil¹⁸, John C Wingfield¹⁹

Affiliations

¹ Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA jorgensonla@od.nih.gov.
² Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Stanford Neurosciences Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA bnewsome@stanford.edu.
³ Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
⁴ Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Lulu and Anthony Wang Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY 10065, USA.
⁵ Institute for Medical Engineering and Science and Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114, USA.
⁶ Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Bioengineering, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
⁷ Brown Institute for Brain Science, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA.
⁸ Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
⁹ Biological Technologies Office, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Arlington, VA 22203, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Neurobiology, Neuroscience Institute, Morehouse, School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA 30310, USA.
¹¹ Biology Department and Volen Center, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02454, USA.
¹² Department of Bioengineering, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA.
¹³ Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
¹⁴ Howard Hughes Medical Institute and James H. Clark Center for Biomedical Engineering & Sciences, CNC Program, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
¹⁵ Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Computational Neurobiology Laboratory, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA.
¹⁶ Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Bezos Center for Neural Circuit Dynamics and Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
¹⁷ Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Pharmacology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
¹⁸ Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, University of Minnesota, MN 55454, USA.
¹⁹ Directorate for Biological Sciences, National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA 22230, USA.

Abstract

The evolution of the field of neuroscience has been propelled by the advent of novel technological capabilities, and the pace at which these capabilities are being developed has accelerated dramatically in the past decade. Capitalizing on this momentum, the United States launched the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative to develop and apply new tools and technologies for revolutionizing our understanding of the brain. In this article, we review the scientific vision for this initiative set forth by the National Institutes of Health and discuss its implications for the future of neuroscience research. Particular emphasis is given to its potential impact on the mapping and study of neural circuits, and how this knowledge will transform our understanding of the complexity of the human brain and its diverse array of behaviours, perceptions, thoughts and emotions.

Keywords: BRAIN Initiative; neural circuitry; neurotechnology.

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Review

MeSH terms

Brain Mapping / methods*
Humans
Nerve Net / anatomy & histology*
Neurosciences / methods*
Research Design

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Grants and funding