Litigation

NIH Launches the Human Connectome Project to Unravel the Brain?s Connections

By Michael Kaplen

The National Institutes of Health Blueprint for Neuroscience Research is launching a $30 million project that will use cutting-edge brain imaging technologies to map the circuitry of the healthy adult human brain. By systematically collecting brain imaging data from hundreds of subjects, the Human Connectome Project (HCP) will yield insight into how brain connections underlie brain function, and will open up new lines of inquiry for human neuroscience.

Investigators have been invited to submit detailed proposals to carry out the HCP, which will be funded at up to $6 million per year for five years. The HCP is the first of three Blueprint Grand Challenges, projects that address major questions and issues in neuroscience research.

The Blueprint Grand Challenges are intended to promote major leaps in the understanding of brain function, and in approaches for treating brain disorders. The three Blueprint Grand Challenges to be launched in 2009 and 2010 address:

• The connectivity of the adult, human brain
• Targeted drug development for neurological diseases
• The neural basis of chronic pain disorders

Read more about the human brain project.

Full post as published by Brain Injury News and Information on August 15, 2009 (boomark / email).