■ competing for "brain science" ①
editorial comment/note Brain science aims at clarifying the working principle and mechanism of brain and nervous system, and is considered as the "last frontier" of natural science. In recent years, with the breakthrough of artificial intelligence technology, the great potential of brain science has once again been highly valued by governments and scientific circles all over the world. The International Department of Science and Technology Daily will publish a series of articles from now on to introduce the progress of the "brain plan" in the United States, Europe and China.
Three years ago, US President Barack Obama announced the "Brain Research Plan for Promoting Innovative Neurotechnology" (referred to as "Brain Plan") with great support in policy and funds. Now, what kind of results has this world-renowned research project achieved? Because the specific affairs of the project are handled by many institutions, and the emphasis of their research and development is different, it is difficult for us to get a glimpse of the whole leopard. However, from the research situation of several major participating institutions, we can draw the conclusion that the progress of the "brain project" in many fields gives us reason to believe that the mystery of the human brain will eventually be uncovered.
Federal departments lead new projects and new achievements frequently.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the most important federal institution in the "Brain Project", and more than 10 research institutions under it participate in the project. In September, 2013, the NIH "Brain Project" working group proposed nine funding areas in fiscal year 2014, including: counting brain cell types, creating brain structure atlas, developing large-scale neural network recording technology, developing appropriate tools for operating neural circuits, understanding the relationship between nerve cells and individual behaviors, integrating theories, models, statistical data and computing power to apply to neuroscience experiments, describing human brain imaging technology mechanism, establishing human data collection mechanism for scientific research and In fiscal year 2016, NIH invested as much as $135 million in the "Brain Project" project.
High investment leads to high returns. In the past three years, NIH has achieved fruitful results: in April 2014, NIH cooperated with the Medical College of the University of North Carolina to find a way to control the behavior of experimental animals more accurately by controlling the neural circuits of their brains. This achievement was called by the American media as the first important achievement since the launch of the "Brain Project"; In May this year, NIH researchers cooperated with researchers from the University of Maryland and other institutions, and found that the antidepressant effect of ketamine (a psychotropic drug) originated from a metabolite produced after taking it, which not only can quickly suppress depression, but also does not produce side effects such as anesthesia or addiction. Just recently, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have drawn the most comprehensive and accurate map of the human brain so far, among which 97 human cerebral cortex regions were first published, which is the latest achievement of NIH-funded projects.
In addition to NIH, the federal government departments participating in the "Brain Project" also include the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the Ministry of National Defense, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the United States, and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA) of the United States. These institutions have set up corresponding research projects to cooperate with the implementation of the "brain plan". For example, NSF plans to invest $72 million in the "Brain Project" in 2016. NSF proposed in February this year that the National Brain Observatory would be established to strengthen the research infrastructure in the field of neuroscience. Recently, NSF also launched the "Next Generation NeuroNex" project, aiming at strengthening the understanding of neuroscience and cognitive science.
Non-federal departments follow up with you, sing and I’ll come on stage.
If the federal government agencies are the leaders of the "brain plan", research institutions such as foundations, research institutes and universities are the most important implementing forces of this plan. At present, there are five foundations, two research institutes, seven universities and more than 10 enterprises among the partners of "Brain Project". Their research and development strength in the field of brain science ranks among the top in the world, and they have also made many achievements in their research in the past two years.
As one of the important promoters of "Brain Project", Keweili Foundation plays an important role in "Brain Project". The brain science research institutes set up by the Foundation in many American universities all have strong strength, and in the past two years, new research results have been continuously made under the framework of "Brain Project", which has attracted much attention. In October 2015, the foundation announced that it would invest more than 100 million US dollars to set up three new brain science research institutes to conduct related brain science research, which will undoubtedly greatly promote the progress of the "brain project".
Another important promoter of brain planning — — Allen Institute of Brain Science is not far behind. Earlier this year, the Institute established a cell type database, which contains data of 240 kinds of cells, such as location, shape and electrical signals, and has a detailed three-dimensional structure map. This database will continue to expand and move towards the goal of "counting brain cell types". In July, Allen Institute of Brain Science officially launched the "Allen Brain Observatory", and published its data set on the neural activity of mouse visual cortex for public research, which will help scientists to understand and model the human brain.
Other research institutions, such as Howard Hughes Medical Research Institute and Carnegie Mellon University, have also made many progress in brain science research in the past two years.
The plan is extremely difficult, but it is difficult to stop the pace of scientific research.
The "brain project" is ambitious. At the beginning, Obama boasted: "I hope to draw a complete map of human brain activity through 10 years of hard work, just like the Human Genome Project." But compared with the human genome project, the task of "brain project" is more difficult. With nearly 100 billion neurons, extremely complex connection groups and mysterious intelligence mysteries, human exploration of the brain can be said to have just started.
But as the saying goes, "if you don’t accumulate steps, you won’t be able to travel thousands of miles;" If you don’t accumulate small streams, you can’t become rivers and seas. " In the process of exploring the mystery of human brain, every related project and every research achievement is a paving stone for a long road of exploration, pointing to the end step by step.
(Science and Technology Daily, Washington, August 14th)