16 August 2014
WORLD REPORT US Congress is yet to decide next year’s funds for the BRAIN Initiative. Meanwhile, researchers move ahead with initial grants and a scientific plan. Washington correspondent Susan Jaffe reports.
The US National Institutes of Health is expected to announce next month the recipients of the first US$40 million in research grants to be awarded under President Barack Obama’s ambitious brain research project he says will give scientists the tools to discover “how we think and how we learn and how we remember.”
Despite uncertain future funding, Obama’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative is moving ahead. At the White House a year ago, the president compared it to the Apollo space mission that landed a man on the moon, GPS technology, and even the creation of the internet. “All these things grew out of government investments in basic research”, he said. [MORE]