The Mesoscale: General area of connection between groups of similar neurons (individual neurons cannot be distinguished). The Microscale: Connections between individual nerve cells ( neurons). Denk.), a set of nerve fibers in a mouse brain (), and many sets of nerve fibers of a live human brain (The Human Connectome Project) The “connectome” is the complete map of connectivity in a brain- but what does that really mean? There are many types of connections and scientists can look at the connectome on three different levels: Left to right: Individual connected neurons from a mouse retina (A. But what is the human connectome, why is it useful, and what makes the BAM proposal different? Mapping the brain on many scales, in many animals Landis, the director of the NIH’s Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), initially shared my confusion over the announcement, she now acknowledges that the BAM project will piggyback on the existing Human Connectome Project. It became clear that these articles did not refer to the new “Brain Activity Map” proposal, but to an existing multi-million dollar NIH-funded Human Connectome Project launched in 2010. When I began researching this article, I quickly found bold announcements of an exciting multi-million dollar brain-mapping project, as well as skeptical critiques of the expensive proposition… but they were all from 2011. Sounds too good to be true, right? Redundancy and confusion The researchers and investors involved hope that BAM will drive advances in artificial intelligence, help us understand diseases like Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia, and stimulate the American economy. Obama plans to spend $300 million each year on this project over the next 10 years. The Brain Activity Map (BAM) is a project that will bring together federal agencies, neuroscientists, and private research foundations to create a functional map of every connection in the human brain – numbering in hundreds of trillions. Obama mentions the #NIH Brain Activity Map in #SOTU So what is this plan? As the director of the NIH, Francis S. Rather, it was a veiled reference to a new multi-billion dollar research initiative planned by the Obama administration and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, MGH.)īy Gabrielle Rabinowitz, the 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama praised American scientists for developing drugs, engineering new materials, and “mapping the human brain.” This scientific shout out was not just a pat on the back for American researchers. (Copyright Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, UCLA and Randy Buckner, PhD. White matter fibers in a human brain imaged by diffusion spectrum imaging. I break down the details and discuss the pros and cons here. Update: The United States government has released more information about the specifics of their brain mapping project, now called the BRAIN Initiative.
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