Posted 03.22.2012 at 2:56 pm
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The Brain Atlas
Allen Institute for Brain Science
Paul Allen’s commitment to tackling big questions in neuroscience grows larger still. The Microsoft co-founder has already contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to brain science, much of it to the establishment of the Allen Brain Institute, a nonprofit charged with building a massive database of information about the brain. Now, seemingly from a frustration with the slow pace of discovery elsewhere in the field, Allen has committed another $300 million over the next decade to expanding his institute to include it’s own lab for neuroscience investigation.
Previously, the Allen Brain Institute’s mission was to provide brain “atlases” of both human and mouse brains, maps that showed various aspects of how brains work, including how various genes are expressed within the brain. The idea was to create an open-access tool for researchers that would hopefully accelerate the pace of innovation in neurological science.
The Institute has done well, Allen said in a press release, but it could do better. The new expanded ABI will tackle big questions in neuroscience concerning the way the brain stores and encodes information and what cellular building blocks underlie all brain function, the idea being that this will provide even more information to the neuroscience community and in turn drive research on the whole to more and faster innovations. If it’s a shot in the arm Allen is looking for, a $300 million investment might just do the trick.
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The EU comes out a year ago with their 'Human Brain Project' to invest 1 Billion Euro's or 1.3 Billion Dollars into digitizing the human brain for future research by EU scientists and now Paul invests 300 Million dollars into his own human brain project. Coincidence?
Just hoping the information is free, Science is dead slow without sharing the information!
300 million dollars? That's alot of toilet paper, looks like he'll have to switch from hundreds to twenties. I agree with greenmatrix, odd coincidence.
Note that the co founder of microsoft is using a mac.
"Why are there copies of the Style section all over the place, d-do you have a dog? A little chow or something?"
-Paul Allen
does he use mac ?
http://www.ommrudraksha.com
Here's an experiment they need to do: Put mice in a white box with dark circles painted in it, until time to feed them, and then put them in a white box with dark triangles in it, while they eat. That way whenever they are hungry their brains will be "thinking about triangles" all the time, and a brain scan at that time will show the pattern used for geomemtry. You can then do the same experiment in reverse (circles for feeding only) on a different set of mice and compare the brain scans. The detectable differences in visual cortex scans from the two experiments could yield new information about how "pure geometry" is processed in a visual cortex. The first step to understanding how geometry is processed is to understand whatever (and if any) patterns of neural activity are different between the circle and the triangle set of rats.
Paul Allen, I pray that you will use some of this large investment into figuring out a way to reverse the effects of neurological damage caused by stroke. My little brother was born with a stroke and he has water on the brain or hydrocephalus. He is my best friend! I prey more than anything in the world that his brain damage can one day be cured by whatever means necessary so that he can function just as intelligently as any other regular person!
The Allen Brain Institute,has explained the activity of brain at genome level the entire gene study at theraputical level of whole brain requires atleast 300 million $,these experiments have achieved wel appreciate around in both human brain and also rat brain,the colored cellular examnation from brain neurons or other will give a power to neurometery to understand the technology and a win over brain death.