Allen's brain research institute gets Army grant

The Seattle P.I. ^ | August 21, 2004 | Tom Paulson

[Stoat]

The military has given Paul Allen's brain research project $1.8 million to incorporate into its overall mission of gene-mapping the mind some additional work on sleep deprivation.

Rep. George Nethercutt, vice chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee and a GOP challenger to Sen. Patty Murray, yesterday visited the Allen Institute for Brain Science to announce the grant from the Army's medical technology program.

"This is a prominent problem for the military that's perfectly suited to the (brain) institute," he said. Nethercutt said the one-year Army research grant was a line item in the 2005 Defense Appropriations Act.

The Allen institute's debut project, the Allen Brain Atlas, aims to map all of the active genes in the mammalian brain -- starting with the mouse brain. Allen donated $100 million to launch the effort last year. Many experts view it as both tremendously important and highly ambitious.

Dr. Allan Jones, acting director of the brain atlas program, said the Army's desire to use the Fremont-based brain-mapping operation to help with its sleep-deprivation studies wouldn't dilute the overall scientific mission.

"We've always envisioned that we're going to apply this project to specific problems in biology. This just happens to be the first one."

Nethercutt was asked why the military would want to spend money on such basic brain science when the war in Iraq appears to be putting a strain on existing resources. The congressman said this is the kind of fundamental research that can help make those resources go further and perform better.

"If we can learn more about sleep deprivation and performance, I think we're going to save lives." The Allen brain project, Nethercutt said, should provide sleep researchers with new insights into sleep, fatigue and mental performance under duress -- all areas of interest to the military.

Nethercutt noted the grant specifically aims to promote collaboration between the brain institute and one of the military's top scientists in sleep, Dr. Greg Belenky.

Belenky, an Army colonel, is a researcher at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research who will soon become a Washington State University professor and director of sleep research at the Spokane Alliance for Medical Research.

Jones said it wouldn't be difficult to incorporate the Army and Belenky's needs for brain-gene data on sleep into the primary mission of creating a total gene map of the mind. Sleep, he noted, is an essential need hard-wired into the brains of all mammals. Working with scientists such as Belenky to identify the genes active in sleep will almost certainly lead to broader insights into the brain, he said.

Once a series of genes are identified as active in sleep, he said, the goal would be to study different stages of sleep to look for changes over time.

"We can imagine watching the changes of gene expression during a sleep-wake cycle over a 24 to 36 hour period, for example," Jones said. These studies will involve the brains of mice, he said, but people and mice share many of the same genes.

[Stoat]

Too bad they aren't researching why it is that people turn into Leftists.....

[VaBthang4]

"Too bad they aren't researching why it is that people turn into Leftists....."

Oh that's easy...they're all victims of something.