UCSF team wins $26 million grant to build brain implant
Source: SF Gate
A team led by UCSF neuroscientists has won federal funding to build an implantable brain device that would record and analyze live electrical signals, then alter them to retrain the brain to recover from mental illnesses like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
The funding, announced Monday night, comes from a U.S. Department of Defense agency that is focused on improving understanding of brain disorders, including illnesses that often affect service members and veterans, and developing new engineering-based treatments.
The UCSF team - which includes scientists from UC Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Cornell and New York universities - will receive up to $26 million for the project. The funding is part of $100 million set aside by President Obama for his national Brain Initiative announced in April 2013.
"Our understanding of the brain is very incomplete. We need to move much faster to get to a much higher level of sophisticated understanding," said Dr. Edward Chang, a neurosurgeon who is leading the UCSF team. "We're taking a big leap forward with this project. How do you build an intelligent device that interacts with the brain? That's never been worked out before."
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/UCSF-team-wins-26-million-grant-to-build-brain-5505946.php
The possibilities are endless.
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