Humans are capable of studying the ginormous sun, discover atoms and learn about them in detail and yet we have neglected the three pounds of mass that rests between our ears, Barack Obama said speaking on Tuesday. The US President said that mapping the activity of Brain will help discover several ways of understanding the nervous disorders which are hitherto inconceivable to man like Alzheimer's, autism, stroke and several other problems.

He has already asked the Congress to set a small fund of $100 million aside for the tentatively named BRAIN Initiative which will begin studying the mystifying universe of the brain. The fund however is a very small sum compared to the funds that were earlier allocated to NASA. NASA's project that monitors the sun alone has been given over five times this sum as funding. 

BRAIN stands for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies. The funded amount will reach National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. All the ethical, legal and societal implications of the research will be recorded and reported. 

Though the goals of the project have not been set yet, heads of the projects at NIH would be working to define the goals and develop a multi-year plan.

At present, our facilities allow us to reveal the average activity of the aggregate cells in the seat of intelligence but not individual cells. Nor can they reveal the tiny details of the single cells of brains. The newer project aims at working at the cellular level of brain and it is likely to hold the answers to the presently unrequited questions like neurological and psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, Parkinson's, depression, epilepsy and autism.

(AW- Anil)