High-Risk Brain Research Wins NSF Backing

The National Science Foundation's (NSF’s) role in the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative is starting to take shape. On 18 August, the NSF awarded 36 grants totalling US$10.8 million to projects studying topics ranging from electrodes that measure chemical and electrical signals to artificial-intelligence programs that can identify brain structures.

The three agencies participating in the BRAIN Initiative have taken markedly different approaches. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which received $50 million this year for the neuroscience initiative, is concentrating on implants and treatments for brain disorders that affect soldiers and veterans, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. It has already awarded multi-million dollar grants to several teams. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which received $40 million this year, has put together a 146-page plan to map and observe the brain over the next decade, and will announce its first round of grant recipients next month.

The NSF, by contrast, has cast a wider net. The agency sent a request in March for informal, two-page project ideas. The only criterion was that the projects somehow address...