US president Barack Obama on Tuesday announced a $100 million research project to map the brain, unlock its mysteries and find cures for neurological disorders.
Indian born Arati Prabhakar, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which pioneered the Internet, is among those leading the multi-agency project.
Launching the initiative, Obama said, “As humans, we can identify galaxies light years away, we can study particles smaller than an atom. But we still haven’t unlocked the mystery of the three pounds of matter that sits between our ears.”
Called the BRAIN initiative, the project will seek to speed up the the development and application of new technologies enabling researchers to map the brain to see how individual brain cells and complex neural circuits interact at the speed of thought, White House said.