Federal government may fund brain imaging project

The federal government could soon propose a large-scale brain research project that University experts say would have significant medical and economic benefits.

The scientific community is still awaiting details about the government’s plan for the project, which President Barack Obama first hinted at in his State of the Union address earlier this month.

“Today, our scientists are mapping the human brain to unlock the answers to Alzheimer’s,” he said.

“Now is not the time to gut these job-creating investments in science and innovation.”

Marian Emr, spokeswoman for the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, said in an email that details such as the project’s potential launch date, duration and funding are still being finalized.

Kelly Giovanello, a psychology professor at UNC, said in an email that she believes the academic community is cautiously optimistic about the project due to the lack of details, such as whether research money will be available to more than a select few institutions.

She said she believed the University would be positioned to make significant contributions to the project.

“The UNC Biomedical Research Imaging Center has recruited an outstanding group of faculty neuroscientists, purchased cutting-edge equipment and launched several areas of scientific inquiry on human brain activity,” she said.

Potential medical benefits of the research include greater understanding of mental disorders and neurodegenerative diseases and why they occur, she said.

Joseph Piven, a UNC psychiatry professor, said research in the last decade has explored the idea of networks in the brain.

“Having a picture of how the parts of the brain interact is really very important,” he said.

Much of the past research has focused on single structures and connections in the brain, but diseases such as Alzheimer’s involve multiple regions of the brain, Piven said.

Scott Huettel, a neuroscience professor at Duke University, said the project will build on decades of work and expand the research.

“(The project will) try to understand how neurons talk to each other and how functions are distributed across regions,” Huettel said.

The project will need to develop new technologies and new methods for computing the vast amount of expected data, he said.

John Gilmore, a psychiatry professor at UNC, said the research will also drive economic development.

“Research always has very tangible economic benefits, both by funding the people that are doing the research … And in the longer term, economic benefits of understanding very complex mental disorders,” he said.

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