Following on PCASTS Session on "The Brain" -- Scientists Get a Head Start". (May 8, 2013)

ScienceInsider's Emily Underwood reports:

Neuroscientists from around the country are wrapping up a meeting today in drizzly Arlington, Virginia, in which they discussed possible directions for the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative -- a $100 million federal investment in brain research that has yet to be clearly defined. This meeting is focused on how the project should address the physical and mathematical principles underlying brain function. An open call for white papers on "Major Obstacles Impeding Progress in Brain Science" inspired responses from more than 70 prominent neuroscientists. The scientists cite problems that need to be addressed, such as to"increase the density and longevity of neural recordings in untethered, freely behaving animals" and come up with "beautiful models" of brain function that can be mathematically analyzed.

In a blog for NatureNews Helen Shen wrote: “The belief is we’re ready for a leap forward,” says Van Wedeen, a neurobiologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and one of the NSF meeting organizers. “Which leap and in which direction is still being debated,” and “We want to know the principles of neuronal function, not just recording of their activity,” says Huda Zoghbi, a molecular neurobiologist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

And “We’re spectacularly underprepared to capture the data that are going to be generated,” says Randal Burns, a computer scientist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Existing brain imaging techniques can generate 1 terabyte of data per day, and proposed technologies may be poised to far exceed that rate, he says.