Mapping the brain

President Barack Obama on Tuesday announced a campaign supporting brain research. The BRAIN Initiative, from the rather tortured acronym Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, has ambitious goals, starting with mapping the human brain.

It’s hoped the Brain Activity Map project, as it’s more commonly known, will lead to treatments for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and stroke — increasing problems in an aging society — as well as autism, epilepsy and traumatic brain injury, the lingering curse of the Iraq and Afghan wars.

But the initial funding request is modest. Obama said he would ask Congress for $100 million in 2014 to begin brain-mapping. By contrast, mapping the human genome — the body’s set of genetic instructions — cost the government $2.7 billion by the time it was completed in 2003, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In addition to the research’s medical benefits, Obama envisions millions of Americans “suddenly finding new jobs in these fields ...”

The task of how we get there from here is being handed to a high-level working group. The group will develop a plan, timetable and cost estimates to achieve these goals. If the BRAIN Initiative even partially attains its lofty aims, the scientists and other researchers behind it will have earned the gratitude of generations.