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Science Monday, February 18th 2013 at 11:35 am

Obama Plans 10-Year Project to Map Human Brain

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In his State of the Union address last week, President Obama made several mentions of a commitment to science that caught our attention. Now it seems some details about those plans are surfacing. One area of study he mentioned in his speech was that scientists are working to map the human brain, and it’s now being reported that the President wants to launch a decade-long program to create the most detailed map of the active human brain to date.

The program is expected to cost billions, but to allay the negative reaction to the price tag Obama also pointed out the huge return on investment the economy saw with similar research. “Every dollar we invested to map the human genome returned $140 to our economy — every dollar,” said the President. This refers to a study done by the federal government that said the $3.8 billion invested in the Human Genome Project since 1990 saw a return of $800 billion.

Several scientists have already said they are involved in planning the project, which is titled the Brain Activity Map, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy will be organizing the project. It is expected to be included in President Obama’s budget proposal in March of this year, but considering what a super-good job Congress does of passing things, it’s certainly not a guarantee that it will make the final budget and be funded.

Expected outcomes of a detailed map of brain activity like this are a better understanding of diseases like Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia, and it could even lead to significant advances in artificial intelligence. It’s likely we’ll see Obama’s political opponents come out against this plan for a variety of reasons like the cost of the project, because that’s kind of their thing. I’d really like to see someone come out against it purely out of the fear that advances in artificial intelligence will lead to a robotic uprising.

(via The New York Times, image via Foxtongue)

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  • Jack Bond

    Why not leave plans like that up to the scientists? Obama has bigger fish to fry that are closer to his jurisdiction that he has been ignoring for too long.

  • Idlethoughts

    Because neuroscience/psychology is no where near as developed as any of the other hard sciences like medical science, biology, chemistry, or Physics. It’s about as solid as a social science in terms of consistency of viewpoints and theories.

    More importantly, we know very little about any of the mechanisms behind either the disorders or the medications we use on them. just knowing what happens and not why infinitely limits our abilities to help people and treat them properly.

    Your brain is your entire world, everything you do, everything you know, everything you see, everything you think, is dictated by an organ we barely begin to understand. And in many people it is or will become, broken or abnormal, and we can’t even consistently verify that anything is wrong with them let alone know how to fix them.

    If you ask me it about damn time neuroscientists got the funding they need and deserve to bring us into the 21 century in a field that effects every single living person on the planet. I for one congratulate president Obama doing his job as the leader of the executive branch by taking the initiative to support this project.

  • This is stupid

    This is the stupidest waste of money Obama has ever planned to spend, aside from these stupid wars. They already have humans’ brains mapped. Look up Remote Neural Monitoring and Voice-to-Skull technologies. The CIA has been watching humans’ brains for at least the last 60+ years. This is so stupid. The government can already control peoples’ brains from the cushy little offices and underground wherever they are. So stupid.

  • Idlethoughts

    I’ve got some spare tinfoil hats if your worried…

  • http://twitter.com/rayban5016 Ray O.

    I was wondering how he was going to find the time with all the vacations he takes. Or maybe that’s why it’ll take him 10 years. Hey Geekosystem, loose the hard on for this guy, and pay attention to the wording of you headlines. You’re giving Obdumbo waaayyyyy too much credit.

  • http://twitter.com/rayban5016 Ray O.

    It’s not the “job” of the executive branch to allocate funds or order a study. If you ask me the government and science are a little to cozy right now. It is being driving by politics. If you want funding, you had better come up with the results progressive politicians want our your funding will be cut…i.e. Global Warming!!! So I don’t need them funding scientist trying to figure out how the human brain works. Let the private sector do that.

    Plus, didn’t you guys just fawn over Darwin and write about over population? So why support something that could prolong human lives? According to you leftist, humans are the problem for everything in the world. So Obama would just be adding to the misery of mother earth, right?

  • Anonymous

    Supporting projects is NOT his job. The President and the Executive Branch’s job is to implement and enforce laws written by Congress. Maybe it would be best for you to educate yourself on how the government works before supporting your arguments with false information just to get behind anything Obama does.

  • Jack Bond

    Wow. Someone actually agrees with me. I haven’t experienced that in such a long time. I think we’re gonna get along juuuust fine.

  • Patience

    this is an amazing conception that given the chance to go full-term could produce the very child we need to evolve through into our collective future, parenting our own potential through nurturing the mystery of ourselves.