In his state of the union address, President Obama cited
brain research as an example of how the government should “invest in the best
ideas.”
In this article,Obama seeking to boost study of human brain , by John Markoff he discusses Obama’s administration is planning a decade
long scientific effort to examine the workings of the human brain and build a
comprehensive map of its activity, Brain Activity Map project.
The hopes for a project like this could develop technology
to understand diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, as well as to find new
therapies for mental illnesses which in the long run could drastically shift
the way this country is leaning to lately.
Of course the project could cost billions of dollars, “every
dollar we invested to the map the human genome returned $140 to our
economy-every dollar”, he said. “Today our scientists are mapping the human
brain to unlock the answers to Alzheimer’s. They’re developing drugs to
regenerate damaged organs……Now is the time to gut these job-creating
investments in science and innovation.”
The only real sources come from the teams of neuroscientists
and nanoscientists in a concerted effort to advance this knowledge. There is
not quite enough evidence in this project to be successful and project the
numbers it claims, but it moves me and hits close to home, with great arguments
and hopeful wishing this could either make or break our economy.
However, a number of scientists said that mapping and
understanding the human brain presented a drastically more significant
challenge then mapping the genome which is markedly different then the European
project.
The significant argument, will it hurt or
benefit this country, we are so far downhill, should we just attempt to manage
better with more detail oriented proposals because we can’t really afford to
cut back on anything else? The work from this project, will it benefit all
working classes? How can we really strive to be the best country again, the
medical field is something unbelievable and can economically help the growth of
this country in the long run.
