MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR
Big Neuroscience “Information is the oil of the21st century,and analytics is the combustion engine.”
-Peter Sondergaard
Excitement around big data is all around us:in the media,in the news,and in science.1The capacity to in-terrogate huge datats of health information from mil-lions of individuals,carry out complex global clinical trials,analyze millions of genetic variants in parallel from diver populations,or measure the complete repertoire of gene activity from a single cell,have become standard tools of biomedical rearch.Another buzzword of mod-ern biology is the concept of emergence,in which novel relationships are appreciated only when different types of biologic data(for example genomic and imaging infor-mation)are co-registered and analyzed together.When dealing with big data,success still requires the creative touch of a great investigator,but also requires state-of-the-art data management and informatics support.In addition,the investments required to make data big are also large and are only justified when there are many us and urs.The specific characteristics of big data have accelerated a broader change in the way science is performed.Big data has led to big science as small groups have coalesced into large teams.
In the United States,the are certainly tough fi-nancial times for scientists,with questration,declining real dollars from the NIH,and prospects of lower reim-burments to academic health care systems restricting their capacity to invest in discovery.For the neuroscience community the strains are particularly gut-wrenching, given the opportunities at hand to extend spectacular advances that are illuminating,with newfound clarity, problems as diver as Alzheimer’s,autism,multiple scle-rosis,depression,and pain.The advances,if pursued, are certain to reveal new and better treatments,repairs, and perhaps even preventions for the increasingly com-mon and frequently devastating afflictions.A few failed clinical trials,in Alzheimer dia for example,can have a chilling effect on industry’s willingness to invest in neu-rologic therapies,thus stable government support is needed if the discoveries of the past few years are to bear fruit at the bedside.The concerns of asoned investiga-tors that rearch funding is at risk in this new economy, of cour,is not lost on young people who today are deciding if they should embark on careers in biomedical science.
Against this background,we were delighted to learn of an ambitious new neuroscience program,first leaked by officials of the Obama administration in mid-Febru-ary,then obliquely referred to in the President’s State of the Union address as a great new goal for the nation, and then formally introduc
小数除法教案ed as the BRAIN Initiative at a White Hou gathering on April2nd.Our enthusiasm was tempered only by uncertainty about what this was really all about.Even administrators whom one would expect would be in the know,for example Story Landis at the NINDS,emed initially uncertain,2echoing the comments of other leaders in systems neuroscience and neuroimaging(personal communications).The new brain mapping initiative appeared to reprent a top-down de-cision,made by a small number of individuals to create a new program designed to capture the imagination and enthusiasm of the public.
The President’s plan was bad on a proposal for a “Brain Activity Map(BAM)project”initially conceptual-ized at a small workshop in the U.K.sponsored by the Kavli Foundation in September2011;3,4attendees included Paul Alivisatos of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab at the University of California(UC)Berke-ley,Ralph Greenspan from UC San Diego,and George Church from Harvard University,a pioneer in human genetics and a leader in the Human Genome Project. The outline,communicated as commentaries in Neuron5 and Science,6enjoyed the strong support of Francis Col-lins,the NIH Director,and the White Hou’s Office of Science and Technology Policy(OSTP).3In concept, BAM propos to combine connectivity mapping with spike activity mapping of individual neurons and circuits to understand the functional relationships between indi-vi
dual nerve cells and broader neural networks on a real time basis.New tools(perhaps bad on nanotechnology and on optical and calcium imaging methods currently in u)will be developed to image neurons,record and modulate their activity,and understand how circuits function.The work would begin in simple systems(for
V C2013American Neurological Association A5初中数学同步练习
example in C.elegans with only302neurons),then move to more complex systems such as Drosophila,and only later tackle higher order mammalian systems.Answers to problems such as autism,depression,schizophrenia,and Alzheimer’s dia are promid.Interestingly,the news of BAM followed cloly on the heels of another,equally ambitious,neuroscience initiative announced with some fanfare by a Swiss-led European consortium,this one designed to build an artificial,simulated,nervous system.
The importance of systems neuroscience,including its potential to elucidate mechanisms of dia,is unquestioned,and we thus view the President’s new initi-ative with considerable enthusiasm.Although the outline of the project is still vague,and any human applications em aspirational rather than immediate,as for the Human Genome Project we can be reasonably confide
nt that a“Manhattan Project”for neuroscience would give birth to new technological advances that are unimagin-able today.This said,numerous rious questions remain, and skeptics are easily found.7–10Exactly how will the project be implemented,who will implement it,and under who direction will it operate?Does the funding for BAM,estimated at over$3billion,reprent new dollars or will it be taken out of current NIH(or National Science Foundation or Department of Defen) budgets?Unless BAM is funded with new resources,the initiative will certainly erode other priorities that could also produce uful translational discoveries–might be realized in the short term.Nobody wants to slow work to develop inhibitors of aggregated proteins involved in neurodegeneration;remyelinate denuded axons in multi-ple sclerosis lesions;and image phosphorylated tau in traumatic brain injury;among many other areas that are currently ripe for progress.And was this process for lecting the next multi-billion dollar grand challenge adequate,bad on the input of only a small number of scientists,some with clear lf-interest?Why this and not countless other priorities,some with realistic potential for health improvement in the next decade?
During its lifetime,the Human Genome Project was derided by many as an inefficient top-down project for big science that would not produce the medical advances that were promid,or even the
economic bene-fit predicted.In2013,the naysayers are in clear retreat, with compelling evidence that genetic discoveries have improved public health,and have also produced enormous economic advantages to society at large.One analysis concluded that the Human Genome Project cost $3.8billion and generated nearly$800billion in eco-nomic impact and more than300,000jobs.11Like BAM,the genome project in its early stages also suffered from a sketchy roadmap,with many of the critical tech-nology needs not yet discovered,yet today it is paying huge dividends.We believe that the same will be true for a national initiative in systems neuroscience,and as we congratulate the President for his audacious vision we await the details with some trepidation.
莫名的伤感Stephen L.Haur MD and卡的英文
马王堆汉墓
S.Claiborne Johnston MD,PhD
Editors
刘永哲References
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DOI:10.1002/ana.23903
ANNALS of Neurology
A6Volume73,No.4
