A video provides background on the Allen Institute for Brain Science and looks ahead to the new project.
By Alan Boyle
Software billionaire Paul Allen is pledging $300 million to establish a series of "brain observatories" at the Seattle research facility named after him, with the aim of mapping and manipulating the mouse brain.
The project's leaders say the insights gained could be applied as well to higher forms of life, including humans. "We believe that this project has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the mammalian brain," Christoph Koch, chief scientific officer for the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and Harvard neuroscientist R. Clay Reid said in the journal Nature.
Details about the brain observatory project were being laid out today at the Allen Institute in Seattle. In an advance interview, Koch cast the effort in terms usually reserved for the multibillion-dollar Hubble Space Telescope project or the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider.
"We're focusing a huge amount of resources on trying to understand this piece of highly, highly complex math and science. The most organized piece of matter in the known universe is the cerebral cortex, the one that makes you and me think and smell and hear and talk. That's what we're trying to understand," Koch told me. "Just as people spend a huge amount of time and effort to build these different observatories to look at the origin of space and time, we're going to build these observatories, these very sophisticated instruments, all of them using common standards, all peering at the brain ? primarily animal brains, but also the human brain."
In a way, seeking out the secrets of the brain is harder than looking for the Higgs boson, because neuroscientists have not yet developed a model for brain function as robust as, say, the Standard Model of particle physics. "In that sense, neuroscience may never have the maturity of physics, partly because the system we're dealing with is enormously more complex," Koch said.
Allen Institute for Brain Science
This image highlights a coronal section of an entire mouse brain, which was stained to mark anatomical boundaries in many brain regions. This process reveals areas where the density of cell bodies is higher (stained in red) compared to the density of axonal projections, or connections between neurons (stained in green). Such anatomical maps will be among the products emerging from the "brain observatories" created by the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
The brain observatory project plans to start with the visual cerebral cortex of the mouse brain, because that's an area that neuroscientists understand relatively well, Koch said. Researchers from outside institutions could work with the Allen Institute's staff, using sophisticated instruments to light up the electrical circuitry of individual neurons, trace the connections between neurons, and watch how thousands of brain cells respond to specific stimuli.
All these techniques can be stitched together to produce a full physiological and structural characterization of entire brain regions. Such insights should lead to better computer models for brain function, which can be fed back into the experimental side of the project for validation.
Koch compared the mouse brain to a set of 100 billion Lego toy blocks, organized into 1,000 different kinds of blocks. "First we need to understand how many different parts are out there, and then how they fit together," he said.
The insights gained from the visual cortex could be applied to further exploration of other functional areas of the mouse brain, and then to other mammalian brains ? including our own brains. When it comes to cortical structure, "there isn't anything particularly unique about us," Koch said. "The principles are all going to be the same. ... If we understand them in a simpler system, then we are a long way toward understanding us."
Allen's $300 million pledge will be spread out over four years to jump-start the Seattle institute's initial 10-year plan for the observatories. The software executive, whose net worth was recently estimated at $13.2 billion, founded the institute in 2003 with a $100 million contribution, and has donated an additional $100 million since then.
"The accomplishments of the institute have been truly remarkable," Allen said in a news release. "With its disciplined, mission-focused approach, the institute has successfully tackled big-science projects, delivering tangible results that are helping to advance brain research around the world every day. I am excited to expand the scale and scope of the institute?s efforts, and I look forward to seeing what we will accomplish in the future."
The Allen Institute says it will use some of the money to double its staff to more than 350 employees over the next four years, as well as to develop new suites of instruments and new computer-modeling capabilities.
In addition to his contributions to neuroscience, Allen has pursued a wide variety of interests beyond software, including ownership of the Portland Trail Blazers basketball team and the Seattle Seahawks football team, the establishment of the Allen Telescope Array, and financial backing for SpaceShipOne's prize-winning rocket venture and the Stratolaunch air-launch company.
Back in 2008, I set up a scale of financial denominations for big scientific projects, ranging from 1 allen (the estimated cost of the SpaceShipOne project, $25 million to $30 million) to 1 apollo ($100 billion or more). On that scale, Allen's contribution to the brain observatory project equals roughly 10 allens, or three-quarters of a rover (the $400 million Opportunity rover, that is, not the $2.5 billion Curiosity rover). Still more money will be needed for the out-years of the project, perhaps including government funding.
Is this project worth the price tag? How will it mesh with other potential neuroscience projects, such as the proposed billion-dollar European Human Brain Project? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
northern mariana islands summer time coolio daylight savings time 2012 ricky rubio day light savings time peter paul and mary
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.