Keynote Presentations: Current and Future Directions of the NIH BRAIN Initiative

The increasing burden of neurological disorders as our population ages, together with the high personal and societal costs of mental and substance use disorders, underscores the need for new ways to intervene and deepen our knowledge of the human brain in health and disease. Not enough is known about the billions of brain cells—that communicate via trillions of synapses to make up the circuitry—that enable us to perceive, think, feel, and act. Launched in 2013, the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN)® Initiative supports research revealing how the brain works, by developing novel tools and applying innovate techniques to precisely map and observe brain circuits. Building on initial successes, and as outlined in the BRAIN 2.0 ACD report, in its second phase, the BRAIN Initiative will invest in large-scale projects that will transform the landscape and potential for neuroscience research. These programs will generate atlases detailing the cell type composition and connectivity of mammalian brains and create a collection of resources to specifically access these cells and modulate their activity and function. In this presentation, I will give a forward-looking overview of the NIH BRAIN Initiative as a background for framing current and future efforts aimed at leveraging these resources for understanding neural circuit function.

Learning Objectives:

1. Understand the potential for leveraging Neurotechnologies to explore the complex composition and connectivity of the human brain.

2. Understand the promise for new Neurotechnologies to more precisely access specific populations of cells in the brain.

3. Gain greater awareness of how Neurotechnologies can be used to explore the connection between circuit computation and emergent behaviors.