By 2020, brain diseases will account for 20 percent of the global burden of disease, according to the World Health Organization. Military service members are particularly susceptible to PTSD as a reaction to the traumas of war. PTSD is a condition in which individuals feel anxiety and panic when reminded of a traumatic event. About 2.7 million Americans served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and at least 20 per cent of them have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It also continues to occur at high rates among civilians because of high incidents of trauma such as an assault, traffic accident, or natural disaster.
Existing drugs for brain disorders are often ineffective and frequently produce troublesome side effects. One reason is that drugs alter the chemistry of the entire brain, not just the area of interest, modulating the behavior of otherwise healthy neurons, writes Adam Piore in MIT technology review. Countries have launched multibillion dollar brain initiative programs goals of improving diagnosis and prevention of brain diseases.
The National Institutes of Health has announced funding for 110 new awards totaling $169 million for the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, bringing the total 2017 funding investment for the program to $260 million. Maps of whole brains in action, the ability to identify thousands of brain cells at a time, and innovative brain scanners are just a few of the advances funded by the groundbreaking effort.
“Understanding the way the brain processes information and how it lays down memories and retrieves them will be instrumental for understanding brain health, and ultimately, preventing brain disease,” said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. “These awards add to work already underway to give us a high-resolution picture of the circuits and networks in the brain, how they work, and where they can go wrong.”
The EU’s Human Brain Project (HBP) is a large ten-year scientific research project that aims to build a collaborative ICT-based scientific research infrastructure to allow researchers across Europe to advance knowledge in the fields of neuroscience, computing, and brain-related medicine. The Project, which started on 1 October 2013, is a European Commission Future and Emerging Technologies Flagship. The HBP is coordinated by the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and is largely funded by the European Union. The project is based in Geneva, Switzerland.
China Brain Project, a multibillion-yuan initiative expected to kick off this year, with the aim of supporting brain research. The China Brain Project is a 15-year project, approved by the Chinese National People’s Congress in March 2016, targeted at research into the neural basis of cognitive function, with additional goals of improving diagnosis and prevention of brain diseases, and driving information technology and artificial intelligence projects that are inspired by the brain. The project follows similar initiatives launched by the EU and the U.S., both with similarly hefty price tags and the same goal: to decode the human brain and use the knowledge to tackle brain diseases and advance artificial intelligence.
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