The White House unveiled a sweeping new initiative on Tuesday to map the individual cells and circuits that make up the human brain, a project that will give scientists a better understanding of how a healthy brain works and how to devise better treatments for injuries and diseases of the brain.

“There is this enormous mystery waiting to be unlocked,” said President Barack Obama of the ambitious project unveiled at a White House ceremony packed with scientists.

Called the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, the program will be funded with an initial $100 million from the president’s fiscal 2014 budget, which the White House is slated to release next week.

Dr Francis Collins, director of the federally funded National Institutes of Health, likened the initiative to mapping the human genome, a $3.8 billion effort he helped to lead as former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

“The human brain is at the present time the most complicated organ in the known universe,” Collins said in a conference call. “We aim through this ambitious – some would call it audacious – project, to try to unravel those mysteries.”

Collins said the NIH plans to assemble a “dream team” of 15 scientists who will set the priorities for the research. Initially, scientists will try to learn the language of how the brain operates.

Ultimately, Collins said, the effort should allow researchers to understand such complex diseases as epilepsy, autism, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, traumatic brain injury and a long list of conditions “that collectively affect 100 million Americans and cost us $500 billion each year in terms of healthcare costs.”

‘PRETTY GOOD START’

Collins conceded that the initial investment of $100 million in the first year is just a start for this project, which likely will take many years to bear fruit. But he noted that the Human Genome Project started off with a $28 million investment.

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Courtesy Reuters.com