The "pinky" and the brain

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.