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Understanding brain function requires the integration of information from the level of the gene to the level of behavior. At each of these many and diverse levels there has been an explosion of information, with a concomitant specialization of scientists. The price of this progress and specialization is that it is becoming virtually impossible for any individual researcher to maintain an integrated view of the brain and to relate his or her narrow findings to this whole cloth. Although the amount of information to be integrated far exceeds human limitations, solutions to this problem are available from the advanced technologies of computer and information sciences.
On April 2, 1993, the Human Brain Project was announced and published in the NIH Guide, grant applications for Phase I feasibility studies were solicited. Four new program announcements were issued on December 6, 2002. (1) THE HUMAN BRAIN PROJECT (NEUROINFORMATICS): PHASE I - FEASIBILITY; PHASE I & II - REFINEMENTS, MAINTENANCE AND INTEGRATION (PAR-03-035); (2) INSTITUTIONAL MENTORED RESEARCH SCIENTIST DEVELOPMENT AWARD FOR NEUROINFORMATICS (PAR-03-034); (3) INNOVATIVE EXPLORATORY STUDIES AND TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT IN NEUROINFORMATICS RESEARCH (R21) (PAR-03-036); and (4) RESEARCH CORE CENTERS (P30) FOR ADVANCED NEUROINFORMATICS RESEARCH (PAR-03-037). The Human Brain Project is a broad-based initiative which supports research and development of advanced technologies, and infrastructure support, through cooperative efforts among neuroscientists and information scientists (computer scientists, engineers, physicists, and mathematicians). The goal is to produce new digital capabilities providing a World Wide Web (WWW) based information management system in the form of interoperable databases, and associated data management tools. Tools would include, and are not limited to, graphical interfaces, querying and mining approaches, information retrieval, data analysis, visualization and manipulation, integrating tools for data analysis, biological modeling and simulation, and tools for electronic collaboration. The Neuroscience database will be interoperable with other databases, such as genomic and protein databases, to create the capability to analyze functional interactions in greater depth. Tools will also need to be created to manage, integrate and share this resource via the WWW providing the capability for channels of communication and collaboration between geographically distinct sites. These databases and tools will be used by neuroscientists, behavioral scientists, clinicians and educators, in their respective fields, to understand brain structure, function, and development across the many levels and areas of data collection and analysis.
The Human Brain Project evolved from the concept of a National Neural Circuitry Database; the idea of developing such a national resource was evaluated by a committee empanelled by the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine. A summary of that evaluation, which spanned two years and included consultation with about 150 scientists, was published in the summer of 1991 by the National Academy Press as a book entitled Mapping the Brain and its Functions: Integrating Enabling Technologies into Neuroscience Research. The report recommended that this initiative, now called the Human Brain Project, be implemented.
Because the scope of the Human Brain Project extends to all facets of brain and behavioral research and includes a range of technology sciences, this initiative is sponsored, in a coordinated fashion, by fifteen federal organizations across four federal agencies: the National Institutes of Health (National Institute of Mental Health, National Cancer Institute, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institute on Aging, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, National Institute on Child Health and Human Development, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Library of Medicine), National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy. Representatives from all of these organizations comprise the Federal Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Human Brain Project.
In the long term, the Human Brain Project will provide more than just a sophisticated array of information technologies to help scientists understand how various aspects of brain function fit together. It will also make available to researchers powerful models of neural functions, and facilitate hypothesis formulation and electronic collaboration. The technologies and standards which are developed as part of the Human Brain Project will serve as models for other scientific information tools. The Human Brain Project will, therefore, have impact far beyond the community of brain and behavioral researchers, and this impact will be felt long after the end of the Decade of the Brain.
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