[News] Obama proposes $100M brain mapping project

[Bernard]

President Barack Obama is asking Congress to spend $100 million next year to start a new project to map the human brain in hopes of eventually finding cures for diseases like Alzheimer's.

Obama says the so-called BRAIN Initiative could create jobs and unlock the mysteries of the brain. That could eventually lead to cures to ailments including Parkinson's and autism and help reverse the effect of a stroke or other traumatic injuries.

Obama says the research has the potential to improve the lives of billions of people worldwide.

He announced the project Tuesday from the White House's East Room. The project will require the development of new technology that can record the electrical activity of individual cells and complex neural circuits in the brain.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

President Barack Obama is proposing a new investment into research to map the human brain in hopes of eventually finding treatments for traumatic injuries and disorders like Alzheimer's disease and epilepsy.
...
Obama wants the $100 million to support research at the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation. ...

More: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-propose-100m-brain-mapping-project-122546752--politics.html

DARPA??? Not sure how I feel about that.

I can only wonder if this idea was spurred on by the Axelrods.

 

[Nakamova]

The DARPA thing is a little disconcerting, but it may be easier to get funding that way...

 

[Chaz1]

Im hesitant to cheer,,,

 

[DayDreamer]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA


If you look at the bottom of the above page, for active projects, it shows Proto 2, which is a thought controlled prosthetic arm, and some others which show experience with neurology in computerized ways.
I saw this on BBC and my first thought was hooray. We are moving on a frontier of excitement. Hopefully no immediate conclusions are made.

http://www.darpa.mil/

 

[Bernard]

DARPA is involved in all kinds of crazy research. Don't want to get too deep into political discussion, but this is the kind of application for which a DAPRA tie-in concerns me:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/2008/0...tects-terrorist-threats-by-reading-your-mind/