Can Big Government Solve the Mysteries of Autism and Alzheimer’s Disease?

On September 30, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a $46 million investment in new tools to study the brain in action. The work of more than 100 neurobiologists, chemists, physicists and engineers, these tools seem to emerge from a futurist’s fantasy. Infrared tags to visualize brain chemistry from outside the brain in real time. A device that can monitor thousands of nerve cells for months while delivering drugs or electrical pulses. A system for altering information flow across the brain using radio waves and magnetic nanoparticles. Even to a scientist, this technological mash-up hardly seems possible. These futuristic projects are the NIH’s first investment in the Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, which was launched by President Obama in 2013. The BRAIN Initiative is a broad scientific effort to discover how the human brain generates its unique cognitive abilities—reason and intuition, creativity and habits, exp
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