Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Recent Work Title A National Network of Neurotechnology Centers for the BRAIN Initiative. Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/42j6287v Journal Neuron, 88(3) ISSN 0896-6273 Authors Alivisatos, A Paul Chun, Miyoung Church, George M et al. Publication Date 2015-11-01 DOI 10.1016/j.neuron.2015.10.015 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Neuron NeuroView A National Network of Neurotechnology Centers for the BRAIN Initiative A. Paul Alivisatos,1 Miyoung Chun,2 George M. Church,3,7 Ralph J. Greenspan,4 Michael L. Roukes,5,8,* and Rafael Yuste6,9,* 1Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute, Materials Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA 2The Kavli Foundation, Oxnard, CA 93030, USA 3Department of Genetics and Wyss Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115 USA 4Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind, and Neurobiology Section/Division of Biology, UCSD, La Jolla, CA 92093-0115, USA 5Physics, Applied Physics, & Bioengineering and The Kavli Nanoscience Institute, Caltech, Pasadena, CA USA 92093-0126, USA 6Neurotechnology Center, Departments of Biological Sciences and Neuroscience, Kavli Institute for Brain Science, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA 7Twitter: @geochurch 8Twitter: @attoboy 9Twitter: @yusterafa *Correspondence: [email protected] (M.L.R.), [email protected] (R.Y.) http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2015.10.015 We propose the creation of a national network of neurotechnology centers to enhance and accelerate the BRAIN Initiative and optimally leverage the effort and creativity of individual laboratories involved in it. As ‘‘brain observatories,’’ these centers could provide the critical interdisciplinary environment both for realizing ambitious and complex technologies and for providing individual investigators with access to them. Progress in science depends on of physical scientists and engineers to Initiative are yielding significant accom- new techniques, new discoveries, closely unite with neuroscientists in order plishments that can serve as important and new ideas, probably in that to jointly develop new experimental and elements for future neurotechnology, we order. computational tools for neuroscience. believe that achieving the project’s full Our ideas formed the basis of what potentiality—that is, creating large-scale —Sydney Brenner became the BRAIN Initiative (Insel et al., tools—requires efforts anchored within 2013), a national White House Grand the well-validated center paradigm. It is The BRAIN Initiative Today Challenge that currently involves more our view that the technological challenges In our original proposal for a Brain Activity than one hundred U.S. laboratories and that must be surmounted are sufficiently Map (BAM) Project (Alivisatos et al., numerous regional offshoots. The collec- complex that they are beyond the 2012), we emphasized that the scientific tive tackling of this grand challenge in sci- reach of single-investigator efforts; we understanding of the brain has been ence and technology is already widely believe they can only be tackled through hampered by the limitations of traditional perceived to be a national success and highly coordinated, multi-investigator, methods for recording neuronal activity. an example of U.S. leadership in science cross-disciplinary efforts. Below, we These methods largely measure one and technology. Indeed, since its incep- expand on this proposition, outlining our neuron at a time and thus remain ill-suited tion, similar initiatives have been launched reasons and evidence that implementing for probing complex neural circuits that by other countries; this indicates global a network of neurotechnology centers likely operate at higher, emergent levels consensus about the scientific value and can ensure the success of the BRAIN of functionality. To solve the challenges potential of the Initiative. Initiative. of observing and interacting with neural In this NeuroView perspective, we circuitry at these higher levels of revisit an important component of our National Centers Enable Complex, complexity we pointed to the recent ad- original BAM proposal—one that, if real- Transformational Science vances in nanotechnology, molecular re- ized, will significantly leverage the prog- To illustrate the power of the center para- porters, advanced optical and photonic ress achieved by the BRAIN Initiative. digm, we cite three recent and significant systems, and large-scale semiconductor Specifically, we wish to reemphasize the scientific achievements in the biomedical integration. These fields are now suffi- development of a coordinated, national and physical sciences that have been ciently mature to permit their concatena- network of neurotechnology centers, enabled by center-scale efforts. First, we tion into powerful neurotechnologies devoted to the creation and dissemination point to gene-sequencing technology, that will fundamentally transform how of next-generation tools for neuroscience, which has enabled the modern era of ge- neuroscience research is carried out. To neuromedicine, and brain-inspired engi- nomics. Based on previous successes enable this technological coalescence, neering. While the single- or few-investi- with particle accelerators, chromosome we encouraged interdisciplinary teams gator efforts now supported by the BRAIN sorting, and development of computer Neuron 88, November 4, 2015 ª2015 Elsevier Inc. 445 Neuron NeuroView infrastructure, the U.S. Department of such a project is IceCube (Shi et al., ratories to acquire, implement, or Energy first envisioned a national center- 1998), a kilometer-scale neutrino obser- even maintain. Since connectomics based approach for genomics in the vatory at the South Pole that, in 2013, first is an enterprise that requires auto- mid-1980s (Cook-Deegan 1989). It then achieved detection of neutrinos origi- mation and massively parallel data proceeded to fund individual technol- nating outside of our solar system (Aart- acquisition and analysis, it is ogy-oriented laboratories’ efforts to build sen et al., 2015). Its underlying technology sensible for such instruments, or the many initial components essential for was developed, perfected, and assem- even larger future machines, to be developing genome sequencing instru- bled by a highly coordinated network of hosted within one such center to mentation—including improvements to contributing laboratories. These efforts in facilitate research for the entire Sanger sequencing enzymes, fluorescent this network were distributed at various neuroscience community. To this labeling, capillary electrophoresis, etc. points and institutions nationwide but could be added complex future Indeed, it was through subsequent, coor- were coordinated by a National Science instrumentation capable of inte- dinated efforts and partnerships that Foundation-funded center at the Univer- grating connectomics with tran- evolved between two national centers, sity of Wisconsin, Madison. Another scriptomics and cell history, that is, one at Caltech and the other at Applied example is NuStar (Harrison et al., 2013), with developmental lineage and ac- Biosystems, that these individual com- the satellite-based X-ray telescope that tivity (Marblestone et al., 2014). ponents were ultimately concatenated is now beginning to provide astounding Here, candidate technologies may into an integrated technological system new images and insights into black holes also involve specialized super-reso- comprising automated gene sequencing and violent events in the universe’s evolu- lution fluorescent microscopy (Chen instruments, reagents, and software. tion (Perez et al., 2015). NuStar followed a et al., 2015), plus in situ identifica- After evolving through several models, paradigm similar to that of IceCube, in this tion of molecular profiles and the Prism 3700 Sequencer was eventually case through a NASA-funded center led barcodes (Crosetto et al., 2015). upscaled for robust mass production. Its by Caltech astrophysicists. In these, and These complex technologies are, subsequent acquisition by sequencing many other similar examples, the center again, perhaps most appropriate centers worldwide powered the efforts paradigm has harnessed the collaborative for deployment within a center- that culminated in the elucidation of the power of interdisciplinary scientific teams based context. human genome (Springer, 2006). In the to solve critical problems and advance the d Assembly and deployment of ten years following this achievement, frontiers of science. We ask: why should massively multiplexed, implantable the U.S. National Institutes of Health sup- 21st-century neuroscientists continue to electrical or photonic neural nanop- ported an even more aggressive push operate in isolation, when they could robe systems will require large- toward ‘‘next-generation sequencing’’ powerfully organize to tackle major scale semiconductor integration, that ultimately resulted in a million-fold outstanding problems in concert? nanofabrication, robust foundry- improvement in the cost and quality scale production, and big-data of gene sequencing technology. These Scientific Need for National Centers computational resources. If left to breakthroughs resulted in an unantici- for Neurotechnology individual laboratories, these tasks pated economic bonanza: the $3.8 billion We strongly believe that a coordinated cannot be carried out with the level