Recent meetings of the Multi-Council Working Group (MCWG) for the NIH BRAIN Initiative and the MCWG Neuroethics Division provided updates on BRAIN’s scientific progress, considerations of the neuroethical issues surrounding the science, and discussions on how to continue working toward the goals of the BRAIN 2025 report…
On February 14th, 2017, the Neuroethics Division of the Multi-Council Working Group (MCWG) to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative® held its third in-person meeting. The Neuroethics Division serves as a resource of neuroethics expertise, to help navigate the unique ethical considerations entailed by BRAIN-supported research. The goal of the meeting was to review the Division’s previous efforts and strategize next steps. Dr. Walter Koroshetz, Director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), opened the meeting with a current snapshot of the NIH BRAIN Initiative. The Division has been busy during its first year, with its members having published various articles regarding the BRAIN Initiative and neuroethics, organized ongoing conversations with stakeholders (including BRAIN investigators and partner organizations) interested in neuroethics, provided a consultation to a BRAIN investigator, and produced the first in a series of neuroethics one-pagers for investigators. The Division focused on determining where to place its attention and resources moving forward.
To that end, the Division heard additional input from a few partner organizations, including the Kavli Foundation, Korean Brain Initiative, and Food and Drug Administration (FDA). NIH program officers in attendance engaged the Division in a discussion of how to prepare for potential future, unanticipated ethical concerns, while addressing pragmatic neuroethics questions prompted by current research projects. Division member Dr. Rafael Yuste from Columbia University advocated for developing ethical guidelines for novel neurotechnologies. The group discussed his proposal and the value of working to define neuroethical considerations that may be unique to the BRAIN Initiative. Additionally, the group discussed leveraging the annual BRAIN Initiative Investigators Meeting as an optimal venue to continue efforts to raise the profile of neuroethics, potentially with a plenary neuroethics talk. The Division also discussed the need for neuroethics training for the next generation of neuroscientists.
The following day, the MCWG convened to discuss the current state of the BRAIN Initiative and its future. The group included MCWG members, directors and staff from the 10 NIH Institutes and Center supporting the Initiative, representatives from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, National Science Foundation, FDA, Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), Kavli Foundation, Simons Foundation, and Allen Institute for Brain Science, and members from the MCWG Neuroethics Division. The meeting began with welcoming remarks from Dr. Alan Willard, Acting Deputy Director of NINDS and the MCWG Designated Federal Official, who announced the addition of Dr. Eve Marder from Brandeis University
as an at-large member of the MCWG. Dr. Marder replaces Dr. Cori Bargmann, who resigned from the MCWG because of the additional demands on her time as the new leader of the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative. The meeting included several updates from:
- NIH BRAIN Initiative by Dr. Koroshetz and Dr. Joshua Gordon, Director of the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH)
- MCWG Neuroethics Division by co-chairs Prof. Hank Greely and Dr. Christine Grady
- IARPA by Dr. David Markowitz, who administers the MICrONS project
- Allen Institute for Brain Science by Dr. Christof Koch, President and Chief Scientific Officer
The meeting then had a discussion of evaluation of the NIH BRAIN Initiative, led by Dr. Paul Scott, Director of the NINDS Office of Science Policy and Planning, and by Dr. Meredith Fox, Director of the NIMH Office of Science Policy, Planning, and Communications. The MCWG suggested tracking the extent to which new technologies have been disseminated to the community, associated training efforts, the status of diversity in the BRAIN workforce, and the number of publications citing BRAIN support. The group also stressed the importance of ensuring that methodologies exist for monitoring and sharing tools and data created through the Initiative, and proposed using the NIH BRAIN Initiative and BRAIN Initiative Alliance websites to support disseminating such information.
Next, Dr. Greg Farber, the Director of NIMH’s Office of Technology Development and Coordination, and other program staff reported an analysis of how the current set of NIH BRAIN Initiative awards fit onto the roadmap outlined in the BRAIN 2025 report. Within the context of developing tools to understand brain cells and circuits, the MCWG discussed the merits of a funding opportunity specifically focused on non-neuronal brain cells. They also suggested the incorporation of an independent group to review the standards and software development tools that are being proposed in applications. Furthermore, the group considered how to better involve software engineers, computational scientists, and theorists, the importance of training programs for computational and quantitative methods, and the idea of re-forming the BRAIN Advisory Committee to assess the BRAIN Initiative as it enters its second phase (2020-2026).
The meeting concluded with a discussion about the annual BRAIN Initiative Investigators Meeting. Dr. Amy Adams, Director of the NINDS Office of Scientific Liaison, provided information on the third annual meeting that occurred on December 12-14, 2016. The next meeting is being planned for early April 2018. The MCWG offered suggestions to help make the next meeting even more successful, including reducing the number of parallel sessions and replacing the evening talks with poster sessions.
Overall, the MCWG meeting established that the BRAIN Initiative has had a strong beginning phase. As the Initiative approaches its next stage, it will become increasingly important to evaluate outcomes, support dissemination of the tools/technology/data, and bolster training so scientists can incorporate BRAIN tools and technologies and leverage the data sets. Recruitment of non-traditional neuroscientists and incorporation of interdisciplinary approaches remain an important aspect of BRAIN, and measures indicate that the field continues to grow.
The next MCWG and Neuroethics Division meetings are being planned for August 2017.