Brain Activity Map Project is futile, say some scientists, others enthused
February 28, 2013
(Credit: iStockphoto)
In setting the nation on a course to map the active human brain, President Obama may have picked a challenge even more daunting than ending the war in Afghanistan or finding common ground with his Republican opponents, The New York Times reports.
Many neuroscientists are skeptical that a multiyear, multibillion dollar effort to unlock the brain’s mysteries will succeed.“I believe the scientific paradigm underlying this mapping project is, at best, out of date and at worst, simply wrong,” said Donald G. Stein, a neurologist at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.
“The search for a road map of stable, neural pathways that can represent brain functions is futile.”
The state of the art in animal research is to sample from roughly a thousand neurons simultaneously. The human brain has between 85 and 100 billion neurons. “For a human we must develop new techniques, and some of them from scratch,” said Dr. Rafael Yuste, a neuroscientist at Columbia who has pioneered the use of lasers to measure the activity of neurons in the cortex of mice.
An article last year in the journal Neuron described a possible path toward mapping the active human brain. The article, signed by six prominent scientists, proposes that the project begin with species that have brains with very small numbers of neurons and then work toward increasingly complex animals.
The scientists cited the worm C. elegans, which to date is the only animal for which there is a complete static map, or “connectome.” That worm has just 302 neurons with 7,000 connections. The authors propose moving on to the Drosophila fly, which has 135,000 neurons; the zebra-fish, with roughly one million neurons; the mouse; and then the Etruscan shrew, the smallest known mammal, whose cortex is composed of roughly a million neurons.
But the leap to the human brain is so enormous that one of the scientists who has participated in planning sessions, the neuroscientist Terry Sejnowski from the Salk Institute, has called the challenge “the million neuron march.”
While the researchers have proposed a wide range of technologies that might be applied to the problems, many of them are still prototypes or speculative. Some of them, like nano-robots being designed at places like the Wyss Institute laboratory at Harvard, seem like they are straight from “Fantastic Voyage,” the 1966 movie that imagined the ability to shrink submarines and humans — specifically, Raquel Welch — for journeys through the human body.
At a meeting in Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 17 to explore the data storage needs of the proposed mapping project, computer scientists, neuroscientists and nanoscientists concluded that it would require three petabytes of storage capacity to capture the amount of information generated by just one million neurons in a year.
There are one million gigabytes in a petabyte. The Large Hadron Collider in Geneva generates about 10 petabytes of data annually. If the brain contains between 85 and 100 billion neurons, that means that the complete brain generates about 300,000 petabytes of data each year.
One facet of the project certain to create controversy is that the scientists are also developing technologies that manipulate neurons, raising the specter not just of mind reading, but mind control. The scientists argue that it is in controlling neurons that they can gain valuable information on brain function.
Comments (52)
by Brian
As a scientist I am less enthusiast about the BAM, simply because we are staring down the barrel of sequestration and unprecedented pressure on research. Success rates for new grants are in free fall and meritorious ideas are going unexplored. Compounding that by sucking more funds out of the system in the current climate does not seem wise. Not many would be against it if it means additional funding for neuroscience, and if the result is not establishing a cabal that controls neuroscience research. In my view the latter would set brain research back, not advance it.
by Curtis A. Bagne
Upon searching this article and all comments, doesn’t it seem puzzling that there is no mention of emergence? Will knowing every spike of every neuron be sufficient to gain understanding of the biological basis of self reports of depression, anxiety, and pain and of consciousness itself? Or might we also have to measure how and to what extent all these actions are coordinated over time as an emergent property of individual brains as complex, dynamic, and adaptive systems (CDAS)? Software technology now exists to measure coordinated action as an emergent property of CDAS. One preliminary step to BAM would be to apply this computational algorithm to readily available periodic time-ordered data as from functional brain MRIs.
by Curtis A. Bagne
The intent here would be, for example, to relate measures of coordinated action or functional connectivity obtained with a temporal resolution of about two seconds as with BOLD fMRI to measures of self-reported pain with a higher temporal resolution of minutes. In this way, we could take a step beyond trying to map activity in brain regions that subserve pain to investigating how pain perception might be related to how brain regions are interacting over time. Then, if successful, we could investigate how pain medications might up or down regulate these interactions-over-time to help understand mechanisms of drug effect.
by Larry Coleman
“Many [biologists] are skeptical that a multiyear, multibillion dollar effort to unlock the [genome's] mysteries will succeed. ‘I believe the scientific paradigm underlying this mapping project is, at best, out of date and at worst, simply wrong’”. And by changing only two words I give you the exact same junk that was being made about the Human Genome Project 20 years ago.
by Kaliannan Raju (@rkaliannan)
You are absolutely right, Larry. I remember the 70′s when many scientists felt it would be impossible to determine the sequence of DNA until two great biochemists, Frederick Sanger and Walter Gilbert came up with brilliant techniques to sequence small pieces of DNA. I am absolutely sure this project is very feasible with advances in molecular biology, neuroscience and nanotechnology. The brain, I believe, is the most mysterious thing in the known universe and any effort, no matter how expensive it is, will hugely benefit humanity.
by Peter the printer
Category mistake; there isn’t time to understand how the brain works [even if it was possible or useful] before we are all extinct due to climate change. When you’re drowning or starving, other obsessions tend to go on the back burner. Need to pay attention to what is actually happening in the real world, we have less than 100 years, possibly a lot less as the rate of change is accelerating all the time. OK to dream about these things, but not to waste time on. If the whole of our species concentrated on surviving climate change, there might be a slim chance some might make it. Otherwise it’s ‘roll on the next contender for dominant species’.
by Giulio Prisco
Peter, please feel free to focus on your priorities. I will feel free to focus on mine.
by trakk
This money has not been ‘diverted’ from funds if any, set aside for climate change.
Those need attention too, nobody is denying it. But this project needs it too.
by bizonc
Climate change is so politicized. The far left exaggerate it as doomsayers and the far right just deny reality. It’s an important topic and climate change could do us in in 500-1,000 yrs, but not anytime soon. Most scientists agree all the small changes people make in their to reduce their carbon footprint is not making a difference. What you buy or not buy doesn’t matter. We would need to do big things and Geo-engineering is still in the research phase. Mapping the brain is a top priority. So is all the eggs in one basket. Need to get spread out in the solar system. I would agree once a portions of humans leave Earth, we will start to take better care of our home planet.
by bizonc
I meant I would argue not agree once portions of humans leave Earth, we will start to take better care of our home planet. My writing was horrible above. To many things going on at once.
by Ian Clarke
“Category mistake; there isn’t time to understand how the brain works [even if it was possible or useful] ”
Absolutely! I’m in complete agreement with you, but only in your instance. :)
by Cybernettr
You must be unfamiliar with Kurzweil’s projections that, since the efficiency of solar energy is progressing at an exponential pace, doubling every couple of years, and it now supplies 1% of our total energy needs, in just about 14 years that percentage will be 100%, meaning that polluting fossil fuels will be unneeded. I suggest you become familiar with Kurzweil’s projections before posting your overwrought opinions on KurzweilAI.
http://bigthink.com/think-tank/ray-kurzweil-solar-will-power-the-world-in-16-years
by Sea bass
Shadowing what others said, your concern over climate change is hyperbole. Better to focus on reaching singularity, which would solve all climate problems anyway. 100 years LOL, I fear Apophis more than human-initiated climate change. You need a refresher on earth’s climatic past and modern oceanographic science.
by Page
For those of us with family members who’s lives have been stolen by severe autism in rendering them unable to communicate with the rest of the world, I find hope in this research. There are hundreds of thousands of us, and hundreds of thousands more coming in the next decade.
by trakk
true
by anthrobotic
Nobody’s going to mention the reasonably parallel European Human Brain Project? Okay then, this looks like a job for a smartass pseudo-journalist:
Human Brain Mapping & Simulation Projects: America Wants Some, Too?
“Europe & now maybe the U.S.A. want to map or simulate or build their very own version of the universe’s greatest known computational artifact: the gelatinous wad of convoluted electrical pudding in your skull.” – http://goo.gl/79m8a
-Reno at Anthrobotic.com
by Sea bass
The human genome project was successful via the implementation of a dedicated programming language package tailored for genetics. Do that for brain mapping. Awaiting the release of NeuroPerl!!!
by melajara
This is a STRATEGIC project and will be a catalyst for other strategic assets (AI, “soft” data extraction (contrast it with torture) for national security intelligence, “soft” mind control and targeted enhancement like e.g. dampening (but not eliminating) fear for soldiers on battlefields etc.).
It is true that SENS needs more kick-start funding but on an already overcrowded planet with the nightmare of any government to have to fund pensions and having to take care of an aging population, you can’t blame those governments for not pushing research on human longevity.
On the contrary, death on retirement would be the ideal target for them!
But wait, no need for retirement anymore if SENS succeeds!
Very true but then you have to compensate with strict regulation on children number.
But nowadays which politician can imagine been elected with such a program? So, forget it, SENS have to be promoted first by selfish billionaires, then wealthy people will benefit, then, maybe, a raising fraction of the rest of us in rich countries, then at last the rest of the world.
by James Ransdall
A contention was made that the effort will require new technologies. No doubt, but that’s part of the purpose: solving new problems usually involves new tools, eg, the space program. I suspect that nano-probes, which would scan the brain from the inside out, may be one of those. I also suspect that software that separates meaningful from low/no relevance data may also be one. As I type this, I’m looking across the street at a building with a green door … lots of not relevant data.
by Gorden Russell
Along the way of this research, in time a scientist will need to implant devices in the brain to map activity. In more time this will lead to us all implanting computers in our heads.
by beatriz valdes
Of course. Heard of The Human Singularity foretold by futurist Ray Kurtzweil? According to him, we are all heading that way, more and more robotic and technological parts making up our heretofore biological formatum. But then, also as per Kurtzweil, that may mean we can be immortal!
by Devin
Marcos, neurologists have a strong bias against this sort of research, because if they’re successful, they’ll do much of the work of neurologists for them, thus ending a lot of that tasty grant money they get to map the brains of worms and such. Look at projects such as the Blue Brain Project. There is considerable success in this field already, you just have to look for it. 300K petabytes sounds like a lot, which it is, but we’ll be more than capable of crunching that data with ease in another decade, considering that IT improves exponentially opposed to linearly. Unless Moore’s Law ceases (which it hasn’t, and won’t for the foreseeable future, on the account of recent advancements such as memristors, graphene, etc) to be legitimate, any talk from Neuroscientists about how futile this is before serious money is thrown at the research, we should take what they say with a grain of salt. The exact same thing was said about the Human Genome Project. There were claims that it would take centuries to get the work done, clearly that was not the case. The largest naysayers were geneticists however, who didn’t want to loose grant money if there was success with the Human Genome Project, this is no different.
by tim the realist
if a problem is really hard to solve and we expect the solution to take a really long time, then we had best start working on it right away! Any delay in starting work towards a solution just pushes out the completion schedule even longer. We are already behind and need to catch up quickly.
by Peter
Interestingly, that is not necessarily true. It might be faster, on the whole, to wait until the requisite technology is more mature. Otherwise, you will face the necessity of upgrading equipment — and software — in the middle of your project, probably more than once. Each time you do this, you have to port your software and possibly all your data or else you wind up running a multiplicity of only partially compatible systems. As a result, you may finish later and expend more resources than if you’d simply waited for the right technology to come along. Of course, a major impediment to this strategy is that researchers and investors right now don’t want to sit around twiddling their thumbs. And, it is often the availability of budget outlays that determines when a project is undertaken.
by tim the realist
PS: you are assuming also that someone else has already started solving the problemsyou will face. They obviously listened to me and started sooner than you working on solutions to hard problems and thus have developed the technology to allow your project to move faster.
by trakk
If i am not mistaken, that how they will do it. First develop the requisite technologies/software or speed up their development if they already there but still immature.
This development is happening over a span of ten years. The first few years will be spent on developing the software/technology/imaging/storage and any other technology necessary.
by Bob Blum
My article on this (BAM: Brain Activity Map: Every Spike from Every Neuron on bobblum.com) contains links to all the full online publications including the must-see original draft that contains all the nitty-gritty nanotech. (Much of this was cut by the editors of the article in Neuron.)
Every single-unit neurophysiologist knows Rafael (Rafa) Yuste, one of the (several) very prestigious authors of this proposal.(Rafa’s lab developed many of the GFP/ calcium reporters that are discussed.) I had never heard of Dr. Stein, and his quoted remark is a non-sequitar. (The proposal deals with a functional connectome, which is highly dynamic, not the axo-dendritic connections that other groups seek to elaborate.)
That’s not to say that this proposal is without risk. (I made a bet with a well-known vision prof. at Stanford that this project will yield crucial, pivotally important tools that will crack open neuroscience. But, to just to hedge, my bet pays off in 2027.)
by Gorden Russell
I’ll bet that you win your bet by 2023, Bob Blum.
by Mr. Kirk
What was the Blue Brain Project good for, if nothing other than an initial proof of concept? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Brain_Project It’s not like we’ve just decided on a whim to map the brain with no previous smaller-scale attempts at mapping.
by tjohnson
Obama and cronies are advancing monument-building more than our understanding of the human brain. Trying to direct the effort, concentrate the funding, and wrest the glory of this field from the diverse, competitive players who are making huge gains already. This power grab increases costs and bureaucratization at the expense of agile, vibrant alternatives. There’s already massive international sharing of scientific findings and work through today’s technology and communications without having to roll out a WPA, Manhattan Project, or “5-year Plan” style approach to address this area.
A far better way to engage the best resources to solve big problems fastest is through a succession of diverse challenges. Extraordinary results are being achieved through targeted prizes. For example, over 1200 individuals/teams are competing over a 6 month period for $1 million that has defied big institutions spending billions to Identify Organisms from a Stream of DNA Sequences (innocentive.com).
https://www.innocentive.com/ar/challenge/9933138
by trakk
If i was a billionaire i would have allocated more than a billion of my own money for this :)
by Peter
Paul, is that you?
by trakk
who?
by Haxets
Even if this project doesn’t map the brain in 10 years, the effort needs to begin now. Would we rather China lead this effort?
by trakk
What was that saying…aim for the stars and you will atleast reach the sky!( I hope i got the wording right)
by trakk
how is investing for brain research…which is the final frontier in the study of life, and which help solve many types of brain diseases, while also leading us to innovate in developing advanced storage technologies in pursuit of the need to store the resulting data, and also leading us to innovate technologies in imaging (not just for the brain but the entire human body possibly in real time right down to the cellular level) which can transform our understanding of the entire human body and turn the medical field on its head by helping us find and cure many diseases and can also help us in developing advanced AI, while all of these in turn can transform humanity and the world………tumbling down like a rock??
by CLains
We didn’t go to the moon to put out feet on a ball of rock, and we don’t map the brain to have an atlas of the brain. In these quests the symbol that we promise is truly delivered by the million unforseen and unimaginable things discovered in its pursuit.
by e.s. gravois
I dont doubt that if they throw money at this problem new science will be done. But this is not about science. This is about monument building – specifically a “Big Idea” the prez wants to be remembered for like pharaoh building a pyramid. Why this one? You can bet somebody who expects to benefit from the $$ suggested this. Big Science = Big Dollars for somebody. Remember Solyndra.
by Gorden Russell
From Wikipedia:
“Solyndra was a manufacturer of cylindrical panels of copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) thin-film solar cells based in Fremont, California. Although the company was once touted for its unusual technology, plummeting silicon prices led to the company’s being unable to compete with more conventional solar panels.”
They were taken to court and the judge found no malfeasance. They had a novel design that should have worked out, but market forces did them in.
There is always a winnowing out when new technologies are introduced.
Just look at the automobile. Many manufacturers went out of business before Henry Ford hit it rich with the Model T.
by Justin
I live right next to that sad failed company… its such a nice building too. Now there is a Seagate poster hanging over the old sign.
by GMoney
yeah, and humans will never be able to survive traveling over 60 miles per hour.
by JFH
The Human Genome project was slated to take DECADES. And when it began it was certainly on that pace. Then, wouldn’t you know it, new technologies enabled new methodologies that vastly (exponentially) decreased the time of completion. Now we’re on the brink of buying home gene sequencing kits from the local pharmacy. NOTHING is too daunting in our accelerated age. What is impossible today is trivial tomorrow. At worst they’ll find that there assumptions were wrong and a different tact will be required. One way or another this CAN succeed. We just need time, money and vision.
by Chris Wyke
Whether you think it is mapping the entire process of how the brain works is not so important. Discoveries will be made in the process that will impact artificial intelligence development.
by Jackus
Do it Obama! Don’t waste money on wars, entertainments etc.
Get us to Sing!
by Oneironaut
So what if it’s futile? This has to be done. The sooner we start, the better.
by Aaron
I’m sure many (if not all) of the scientists that will work on BAM and HBP are completely aware of the giant hurdles they will have to overcome in order to reach the desired goal of these projects. When you aim low, however, you land low. Very few great thinkers started with tiny ambitions that grew progressively larger with time. One can be a downer all they want but in the end they won’t be the ones who make the great discoveries and contributions to humanity that will result from projects this utterly important. There were many “prominent” scientists who thought mapping the human genome was a completely ridiculous and futile effort at the time; look where thinking like that got them…
by Knot
The Human Genome Project had plenty of sceptics as well. And even if the Brain Activity Map Project doesn’t achieve it’s intended goal entirely, it will still lead to a lot of exploration of, and experience with, the human brain, and as such, progress.
by gregorylent
the genome project found that there is something more subtle than dna … and led to corporate patents ..
the brain one is like trying to find out about electricity by studying switches .. ok .. sneak preview, there will be something more subtle than brain location (phrenology 2.0)
by Gorden Russell
Right, Knot. One thing about science, even a failed experiment is educational. Many a great discovery came while somebody was looking for something else. This research will lead to something great.
Just click on the name of that naysayer, Donald G. Stein. He earned his Ph.D. in 1965, back when I was in junior high school. Now I am approaching retirement age.
Sure, Stein has been in the field a long time and has learned a lot of things, but many an old scientist hasn’t learned a new thing in a long time. This old neurologist might just be a stick-in-the-mud old fuddy-duddy.
He should stay out of the way of the young researchers.
by Radu
I say that futile is the trust in people of such university that gives PHD in theology.
by Marcos Marin
haha.. well, counting how many angels fit in the head of a pin is a highly specialized study =)
by Gorden Russell
Yeah Bri. Homeland Security has files on all of those pin-head-dancing angels.