This investment is a no-BRAINer

By Ravi Parikh

President Obama's 10-year "BRAIN Initiative" will bring together scientists from private and public institutions to investigate how the brain's 100 billion cells interact with each other. Many researchers believe that brain mapping could unlock the secrets behind complex diseases like Alzheimer's and autism.

While some scientists praise BRAIN (it stands for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies), others have criticized its chances of success and the price tag - $100 million in 2014 and up to $3 billion over the next decade. "We don't understand the fly brain yet. How will this come to anything?" remarked Leslie Vosshall, a neurobiologist at Rockefeller University. The recent budget sequester has heightened calls to rein in the massive project.

Such views ignore the history of federally coordinated research programs. "Big Science" endeavors create jobs, boost the economy, and, most importantly, generate knowledge that saves lives.

There are uncanny links between BRAIN and the Human Genome Project. The project, which also began as a decade-long, $3 billion, public-private effort, was dismissed by some scientists as "unthought-out" and "hyped."

They couldn't have been more wrong. Data from the Human Genome Project have improved our understanding of everything from medicine to evolution. By searching the genome database, scientists are developing targeted therapies for diseases like cancer faster than ever. Biotech companies have used the data to create genetic tests that can show predispositions to illnesses like breast cancer and liver disease.

The venture led to nearly $800 billion in overall economic growth - $141 generated for every dollar invested. These gains came from 310,000 jobs created, innovations in biotechnology, and the creation of genomics-enabled industries.

The genome project is no outlier. From the Manhattan Project to the Space Race to the War on Cancer, Big Science has consistently given us extraordinary breakthroughs with a positive return on investment.

Many believe that BRAIN has potential similar to the genome project's. A 2012 road map of the project in the journal Neuron reports that deciphering connections between brain cells could lead to earlier diagnoses and novel devices for complex brain diseases.

The Neuron road map anticipates that many BRAIN applications lie at the intersection of biotechnology and nanotechnology - two industries with markets already exceeding $350 billion worldwide. New technologies that could emerge include 3-D imaging techniques and biologically inspired computers.

George Church, a Harvard geneticist involved with both the genome and brain-mapping endeavors, believes that disease impact and cost reductions will occur earlier in the BRAIN Initiative because of existing technology: "Clinical applications of measuring brain activity already exist, while there was no such context for the Human Genome Project when we first proposed it in 1984. BRAIN will integrate modeling and testing from the start." Existing technologies could allow the BRAIN Initiative to learn from and even outperform the genome project.

It is difficult to estimate the full impact of Obama's brain-mapping initiative. But if the history of Big Science tells us anything, it is that BRAIN's enormous potential for patients, researchers, and the economy should outweigh initial uncertainty. Fifteen years from now, scientists could be talking about brain maps the same way they do now about genomes and aerospace. That is reason enough to make this investment.