Is $100 Million Per Year Too Little For The Brain Map Initiative? 190
waderoush writes "At a time of sequesters and shrinking R&D spending, critics are attacking President Obama's proposed Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative, which would have a $100 million budget starting in 2014. But in fact, the project 'runs the risk of becoming a casualty of small-bore thinking in science business, and politics,' argues Xconomy national life sciences editor Luke Timmerman. The goal of the BRAIN initiative is to develop technologies for exploring the trillions of synapses between neurons in the human brain. If the $3 billion Human Genome Project and its even more productive sequel, the $300-million-per-year Advanced Sequencing Technologies program, are any guide, the initiative could lead to huge advances in our understanding of Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, and consciousness itself. Only government can afford to think this big, argues Timmerman. 'Even though $100 million a year is small change by federal government standards,' Timmerman writes, 'it is enough to create a small market that gives for-profit companies assurance that if they build such tools, someone will buy them. We ought to be talking about how we can free up more money to achieve our neuroscience goals faster, rather than talking about whether we can afford this puny appropriation at all.'"
Far enough along to throw money at it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Throwing money at a problem only works if you known roughly what you want to do. The Manhattan Project had a well defined goal - 1) separate uranium isotopes or make plutonium, and 2) figure out some way to assemble them fast enough to get a fast chain reaction. They knew up front roughly what was needed. The Apollo program was a step up from the previous rocket programs, but it wasn't the first big rocket.
On the other hand, throwing money at controlled fusion has not been very successful. We don't know how to make that work. Throwing money at artificial intelligence didn't accomplish much until recent years. Interestingly, mobile robotics is now far enough along that throwing money at it works. NASA blew about $80 million on the Flight Telerobotic Servicer in the 1980s and got zip. DARPA has spent over $100 million with Boston Dynamics on BigDog, LS3, PETMAN, and ATLAS, and they're getting results.
The trouble with the BRAIN program is that they're talking about developing bigger computers to emulate a brain, but don't really know what problem they have to solve. This could turn into another supercomputer boondoggle. The comment I've made previously (once to Rod Brooks) about emulating a human brain is that you should try to emulate a mouse brain (1/1000th the mass) first. All the mammal brains have roughly the same architecture. Until you can emulate a mouse brain, you're not ready to try for a human brain. Brooks replied that "he didn't want to go down in history as the person who created the world's best robot mouse." So he tried Cog, which was an embarrassing flop, and hasn't been heard of much since.
He with the deapest pockets wins... (Score:2, Interesting)
"Only government can afford to think this big, argues Timmerman" Then let the government get a job that will earn $120,700,000/yr so they can have $100,000,000 after taxes to spend on such a project.
Re:Far enough along to throw money at it? (Score:5, Interesting)
the initiative could lead to huge advances in our understanding of Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, and consciousness itself
The goal is right in the summary, you wouldn't even have to RTFA...
Ever meet anybody with the former 2 conditions? $2/year an American is less than I'm about to go spend on lunch, saying its not worth it implies a general misunderstanding of the scope of the US economy and a disregard for fellow human beings suffering from these conditions.
I also feel I've met way too many people with the third condition, some of it is pretty atrocious.
Re:Far enough along to throw money at it? (Score:4, Interesting)
On the other hand, throwing money at controlled fusion has not been very successful. We don't know how to make that work.
We know what we need to do [slashdot.org], the path forward is fairly clear. We haven't exactly been throwing money at it [imgur.com], that's the problem.
Other than that, I agree with your post.