U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH

NIH News

National Institute of Mental Health
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, April 16, 2004

CONTACT:
NIMH press office
301-443-4536
[log in to unmask]


MAKING SENSE OF THE BRAIN'S MIND-BOGGLING COMPLEXITY

Leading scientists in integrating and visualizing the
explosion of information about the brain will convene at a conference
commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Human Brain Project (HBP). "A
Decade of Neuroscience Informatics: Looking Ahead,"
(http://www.nimh.nih.gov/neuroinformatics/annmeeting.cfm)
will be held April 26-27 at the William H. Natcher
Conference Center on the NIH Campus in Bethesda, MD.

Through the HBP, federal agencies fund a system of web-
based databases and research tools that help brain
scientists share and integrate their raw, primary research data. At the
conference, eminent neuroscientists and neuroinformatics specialists
will recap the field's achievements and forecast its future
technological, scientific and social challenges and opportunities.

"The explosion of data about the brain is overwhelming conventional ways
of making sense of it," said Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., Director of the
National Institutes of Health. "Like the Human Genome Project, the Human
Brain Project is building shared databases in standardized digital form,
integrating information from the level of the gene to the level of
behavior. These resources will ultimately help us better understand the
connection between brain function and human health."

The HBP is coordinated and sponsored by fifteen federal organizations
across four federal agencies: the National Institutes of Health (NIMH,
NIDA, NINDS, NIDCD, NIA, NIBIB, NICHD, NLM, NCI, NHLBI, NIAAA, NIDCR),
the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, and the U.S. Department of Energy. Representatives from
all of these organizations comprise the Federal Interagency Coordinating
Committee on the Human Brain Project, which is coordinated by the NIMH.
During the initial 10 years of this program 241 investigators have been
funded for a total of approximately $100 million.

More than 65,000 neuroscientists publish their results each month in
some 300 journals, with their output growing, in some cases, by orders
of magnitude, explained Stephen Koslow, Ph.D., NIMH Associate Director
for Neuroinformatics, who chairs the HBP Coordinating Committee.

"It's 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," he said. "It's no longer sufficient for
neuroscientists to simply publish their findings piecemeal. We're trying
to make the most of advanced information technologies to weave their
data into an understandable tapestry."

The conference will feature neuroscience opinion leaders on
the first day, followed by HBP grantees on the second day. There will
also be a poster session at the working lunch and at the reception at
the end of the first day.

"The presentations will highlight what is now possible
because of these ten years of research in Neuroscience Informatics,"
added Koslow.

##

This NIH News Release is available online at:
http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/apr2004/nimh-16.htm

To subscribe (or unsubscribe) from this list, go to
http://list.nih.gov/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=nihpress&A=1.