Computer scientist Alan Kay famously said, “the best way to predict the future is to invent it.” Through a deliberate focus on technological innovation, the NIH BRAIN Initiative is doing just that. An exciting and productive decade of innovation facilitated by BRAIN Initiative research has changed neuroscience in ways we didn’t imagine—and to be honest, in ways we couldn’t have imagined 10 years ago when the initiative awarded its first grants in 2014.
Since the beginning, the NIH BRAIN Initiative’s playbook has relied on the mantra, “think big, start small, scale fast.” Science can be unpredictable but giving smart and creative people opportunities to think outside the box is a time-tested strategy for accomplishing great things. BRAIN Initiative research teams range from a few people in one lab to hundreds of scientists across continents, based on the needs of the project or research question at hand. Through our commitment to open science, BRAIN Initiative researchers who generate new knowledge and/or new state-of-the-art tools make their findings freely available to researchers everywhere. We believe this strategy lifts all boats and maximizes our return on investment.
While all science is iterative by definition—knowledge begets new knowledge and technology drives innovation—the BRAIN Initiative intentionally pushes the envelope to create opportunities that don’t currently exist. Progress to date puts the BRAIN Initiative at an important—and exciting—inflection point. We are meeting this moment by building on what we have learned and adapting to the rapidly changing neuroscience landscape and ecosystem. In this new year and beyond, we will both look back and look ahead to make investments strategically and efficiently, drawing from a wide pool of talent that can make important contributions to science and health.
Human neuroscience is one area poised for rapid progress. Based on advances in our understanding of neural circuit function in humans, remarkable successes with first-in-human neurotechnologies have set the stage for refinement and scale up, facilitated through newly emerging artificial intelligence (AI) methods to personalize therapy. A steady flow of “ground-truth” information from neuroscience research in model organisms has helped neuroscientists identify common principles shared by humans. The foundation of knowledge and tools we have built to date, including brain cell maps in a variety of species, has paved a path to creating a future human brain map. A comprehensive parts list of all the cell types in the human brain is a critical next milestone in human neuroscience. Last year’s release of FlyWire, the complete wiring diagram of an adult fruit fly brain, is a similarly essential step on the path to developing a future wiring diagram of the human brain.
We know the brain’s language between its cells and circuits—its “source code”—gets corrupted during disease and injury, but we don’t know how. Brain wiring diagrams and maps are important ingredients for NeuroAI, an emerging field that explores the bidirectional relationship between natural and artificial intelligence (AI). On the one hand, a major goal of NeuroAI research is to apply advanced AI approaches to predict brain behavior—a critical step in understanding (and then preventing or reversing) brain activity that leads to diseases. Conversely, NeuroAI aims to apply the principles underlying natural intelligence toward the design of more powerful and energy-efficient AI systems and models. Importantly, tools currently being developed for real-time readouts of human behaviors will help researchers understand how human and animal brains organize their worlds. The NIH BRAIN Initiative’s strategic investments in other large-scale resources should enable rapid progress toward development of precision repair tools to fix damaged or diseased brain circuits. Extraordinary levels of collaboration, likely including the private sector, will be necessary to truly derive person and disease-specific treatments that go beyond our current therapies, which mainly treat symptoms.
Finally, and speaking more broadly, we have a responsibility to convert BRAIN data into human knowledge. Whereas just a few years ago, huge data sets presented daunting challenges for analysis and use, emerging AI algorithms that “eat” data offer enticing possibilities for extracting meaning from them. Those tools, along with the BRAIN Initiative’s continued commitment to open science, will enable data re-use and re-analysis, which can significantly enhance the value of individual data sets. Because reusing data in this way raises genuine and complex ethical questions about privacy, identity, bias, and ownership, we will need to continuously keep the general public in the loop as we figure it out. We will explore these ethical questions carefully, and work in partnership with research participants, family members, neuroscientists, clinicians, and leading scholars in ethics and the law.
We have made big strides in our first decade. Last year’s BRAIN at 10 blog series showcases how the BRAIN Initiative synergizes research across NIH, and we’re just getting started. Ongoing BRAIN Initiative research, while itself is not disease-specific, is advancing knowledge on how to manage some of our country’s most difficult health problems. Building on state-of-the-art single-cell genomic resources developed by the BRAIN Initiative, investigators identified a key driver of opioid addiction, and we have a new understanding of what goes on in the brains of people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. There is also BRAIN Initiative research underway that aims to increase understanding, and thus guide treatment, for many other debilitating conditions such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, Parkinson’s, stroke, hearing and vision loss, and others affecting millions of Americans.
As I have said many times, the human brain is the most powerful computer known to humankind—and one that acts with extraordinary efficiency and precision. Most of what makes us human resides in the structure and function of this wondrous and multitalented organ. Understanding it is the challenge of our lifetime—a challenge that NIH BRAIN Initiative staff and researchers are taking head-on.