On Apr. 2, 2013, President Obama announced the launch of the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative. Led by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the BRAIN initiative aimed at producing an array of tools that are needed to establish an integrated theory of how the healthy brain functions over an organism’s life.

In 2014, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) began funding an ambitious research program, the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, with the singular focus of advancing our understanding of brain circuits though development and application of breakthrough neurotechnologies.

The BRAIN Initiative signals a paradigm shift for neuroscience, as it requires the scientific community to work together toward a neural network understanding of the brain. It is critically important to evaluate the BRAIN Initiative in the context of past and future advances in molecular and genetic neuroscience.