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Rastogi, A. Brain secrets cheap at twice the price. Nature 511, 410 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/511410a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/511410a
Harsha Radhakrishnan
Because the other projects had clear goals outlined while the BRAIN initiative, at this point, is open ended. We do not have one theory on how the brain works to reconcile progress in every lab and put together a comprehensive anatomical/functional/physiological model of the human brain. If we really are to invest money to understand the brain, personally, there should be no limits to the money being spent, as long as we have all the neuroscientists pulling in the same direction. Also, how open is the process of funding going to be? How do we prevent an open embarrassment with respect to goals/monies like what the Human Brain Project in Europe is currently going through?
Harsha Radhakrishnan
Because the other projects had clear goals outlined while the BRAIN initiative, at this point, is open ended. We do not have one theory on how the brain works to reconcile progress in every lab and put together a comprehensive anatomical/functional/physiological model of the human brain. If we really are to invest money to understand the brain, personally, there should be no limits to the money being spent, as long as we have all the neuroscientists pulling in the same direction. Also, how open is the process of funding going to be? How do we prevent an open embarrassment with respect to goals/monies like what the Human Brain Project in Europe is currently going through?
Stephan Schleim
You tend to forget that we already had a Decade of the Brain, 1990-2000, that relocated funds and public attention to the neurosciences. Furthermore, the NIMH alone has an annual budget of ~$1.5 billion, of which about 2/3 are going to research.
In the original Nature news article (http://doi.org/tmh), Thomas Insel is quoted suggesting that we might find biomarkers for psychiatric disorders. However, this search has been going on for decades and there is not a single success (i.e. a biomarker reliable enough for classification, diagnosis, and treatment), but a lot of promise.
This could be because scientific methods were not advanced enough, as advocates of BRAIN would say; but how, then, could we be sure that the present methods are just good enough? Another reason could be, though, that most people are just looking in the wrong place: psychiatric disorders are not a property of the nervous system solely, but of the whole system (including society and psychiatrists diagnosing patients). It's a fallacy to focus so much on the nervous system.
I have written more on the analysis of promises within the neurosciences for this Research Topic of one of Nature's partner journals:
Critical neuroscience?or critical science? A perspective on the perceived normative significance of neuroscience
http://journal.frontiersin....