David Brooks continues his quest to discuss everything in terms of neuroscience. This week in The Neural Buddhists he declares, "Just as 'The Origin of Species' reshaped social thinking, just as Einstein’s theory of relativity affected art, so the revolution in neuroscience is having an effect on how people see the world.

He goes on, "This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism." The implications of which he suggest will be the following. "First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is."

And he so aptly ends with, "We’re in the middle of a scientific revolution. It’s going to have big cultural effects." I think Brooks will be a fan of The Brain Wave when it is released next May.

Being obese can increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by as much as 80 percent, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

I am extremely happy to share that the NNTI was introduced into the House and Senate last week! This is a major milestone for the industry and for those suffering from brain-related illnesses.

BIPARTISAN GROUP OF SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES INTRODUCE BILL TO BATTLE BRAIN-RELATED ILLNESS

National Neurotechnology Initiative Act seeks to accelerate development of new treatments for brain and nervous system ailments

SAN FRANCISCO & WASHINGTON, D.C., May 7, 2008 – A bipartisan team of prominent members of both houses of Congress introduced today the National Neurotechnology Initiative (NNTI) Act, a bill designed to foster new discoveries and accelerate the development of new and safer treatments for the one in three Americans living with a brain-related illness, injury or disease.

Championing the NNTI, Senators Pete V. Domenici (R-NM) and Patty Murray (D-WA) and Representatives Patrick J. Kennedy (D-RI 1st) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL 18th) have called upon Congress to reverse the growing economic burden generated by brain-related illness, which has reached $1.3 trillion per year in the U.S. due to healthcare costs and lost income.

"The sheer numbers speak for themselves: There are 100 million Americans suffering from a brain-related illness, with an enormous economic burden that continues to grow as the population ages," said Zack Lynch, Executive Director of the Neurotechnology Industry Organization. "For a modest investment, Congress has the opportunity to streamline research efforts, accelerate the development of new treatments, promote innovation by small businesses and have a meaningful impact on the lives of those suffering from devastating diseases and injuries.”

Designed to increase the speed at which discoveries reach the market, the NNTI employs targeted increases in funding to improve Federal research coordination and ease bottlenecks that inhibit the development of treatments for brain-related illnesses. The bill accomplishes these goals with less than 4 percent of the total Federal neuroscience research budget - $200 million – and reflects a more balanced disease-cost to research-dollars-expended ratio.

“With nearly one in three Americans suffering from some kind of neurological illness, disorder, or injury, I believe it is time we take a serious look at how we approach and fund research into neuroscience and neurotechnology,” Senator Domenici said. “Neuroscience dovetails nicely with the work I’ve long advocated for greater research on the brain and nervous system disease and disorders, particularly in relation to mental health. This new legislation, I believe, offers an excellent vehicle for us to make greater advances in this area.”

"While our ability to understand how the brain works grows each day, our ability to understand and repair brain illnesses remains limited," said Senator Murray. "For the millions of Americans that suffer from a brain-related illness, and the thousands of Americans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with Traumatic Brain Injury and PTSD, a new federal commitment to research and treatment can't wait. This bill will place a premium on sharing the information researchers gain everyday and will support ongoing but underfunded programs at NIH.”

“With so many Americans suffering from brain-related illnesses, it is crucial for us as a society to maximize our efforts and continue learning about the many facets of the brain, leading to a healthier life for all Americans,” said Congressman Patrick Kennedy.

“The time has arrived to offer a serious and comprehensive legislative approach to help the countless Americans struggling and living with brain and nervous system illnesses,” said Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen. “To not act on this important issue is to relegate millions of our citizens to second class status and a lifetime of disabilities. This legislation would develop a comprehensive federal response to research and treatment for brain related diseases. I urge my colleagues to join us in this most noble endeavor.”

Download and Read NNTI Act (H.R. 5989 / S. 2989)

Join me this Tuesday from 4-6 in Boston when I speak at the weekly CIMIT forum at MGH on the The Neurotechnology Industry: 2008 and Beyond. I will explore trends driving the development of next generation drugs, devices and diagnostics for the brain and nervous system including trends in public and private financing, public policy initiatives and technologies. Joining me in the second hour will be Steven Schiff, MD, PhD, Director, Penn State Center for Neural Engineering will be presenting, Towards Model Based Control of Epileptic Seizures. Steven Schachter, MD, Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School; Neurotechnology Program Leader, CIMIT will be moderating the event. Click here for a podcast about the event. Click here to read more about this Forum. As an aside Steve Schacter and I are hosting a CIMIT/NIO Epilepsy Innovation Forum in Boston on Wednesday which will bring together over 50 of the leading neurodevice focused epilepsy researchers, entrepreneurs and investors. Should be fantastic day!

Next week is our 3rd annual Neurotech Industry Investing and Partnering conference. We are hosting it in Boston this year and to our pleasant surprise the event is nearly sold out. There is a fantastic line up of nearly 50 neurotech executives who will be sharing how their drug, device or diagnostic will reshape their marketspace. I'm definitely looking forward the meeting and networking with the other attendees from across commercial neuroscience as well. Hope to see you there.

Socialtext, the leading enterprise wiki software company just launched it's people-centric dashboard. As an advisor to Socialtext, I am continually impressed by how often this innovation-focused company creates new value for its users.

Nature published the results of a recent poll regarding cognitive enhancement detailing the use of ritalin, provigil and beta-blockers. Out of the 1400 people who took the survey, 62% had taken Ritalin, 44% had used modafinil, 15% beta blockers, while 80% believe healthy adults should be permitted to take these drugs if they wish to do so, despite their known addictive properties. These are some pretty tall numbers suggesting the uses of cogniceuticals for neuroenablement continues to increase as we move towards the neurosociety. I also recommend taking a look at Nick Bostrom's piece on the need to retool regulatory paradigms to deal with enhancement.

David Brooks in today's NYTimes posits The Great Forgetting. A pretty hilarious, but insightful piece on personal and societal memory lapses.

"In the era of an aging population, memory is the new sex...Society is now riven between the memory haves and the memory have-nots.

Neural environmentalists will emerge from the slow foods movement, urging people to accept memory loss as a way to reduce their mental footprint. Meanwhile, mnemonic gurus will emerge offering to sell neural Viagra, but the only old memories the pills really bring back will involve trigonometry."

Action Potential, the blog for Nature Neuroscience, has an excellent post on recent funding trends in Chinese neuroscience along with some interesting history with respect to funding levels.

I'm pleased to report that the Neurotechnology Industry Organization's second annual public policy tour in Washington DC last week was a resounding success. As this event demonstrates, NIO's influence and impact on commercial neuroscience continued to grow as we help connect the diverse spectrum of neurotechnology companies and advocates to policymakers.

On March 12 and 13, NIO members met with over fifty elected representatives on Capitol Hill and over thirty officials at the FDA and CMS to discuss the opportunities and obstacles facing those working to improve the lives of patients with brain and nervous system ailments. A full description of our meetings and listings of those we met with can be found here, and below I'll recount some of the highlights.

Capitol Hill

NIO representatives canvassed Capitol Hill in support of the National Neurotechnology Initiative (NNTI), NIO's flagship legislation created by NIO members. Elected representatives and their key staff members expressed substantial interest in the legislation and its promise to help ease bench-to-bedside bottlenecks, accelerating the development and commercialization of treatments and cures for brain-related illnesses.

In particular, Congressional representatives were interested to learn more about how the NNTI will:
· Increase coordination and efficiency of research among federal agencies
· Impact treatments important to the military, such as for TBI and PTSD
· Address aging illnesses whose economic burden threaten the economy
· Secure the U.S.'s position as the world's leader for this rapidly growing industry

During the afternoon Congressman Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), a champion for mental health, announced at a reception for NIO members that he plans to introduce the National Neurotechnology Initiative Act in the House of Representatives. Thanks to the superb advocacy work of our tour participants, we have already received indications that several co-sponsors plan to sign on in the very near future.

CMS and FDA

The next day many tour participants continued high-level meetings on Capitol Hill while others traveled to the offices of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to introduce NIO and discuss ways for the industry to work with CMS to support our objectives.

Among other important topics of conversation, CMS solicited and NIO agreed to develop a horizon scanning project to identify brain and nervous system drugs, devices and diagnostics that will likely impact CMS reimbursement within the next 2-5 years. See here for additional topics of discussion and important contacts at the organization for NIO members.

Later the entire NIO policy tour group reconvened at the FDA where we met with officials from CDER, CBER and CDRH. Meeting highlights include an overview of the Critical Path Opportunity Program (including an in-depth discussion on CPO 38 - issues affecting epilepsy trials -- at the request of NIO member The Epilepsy Therapy Project); developing more effective working relationships with CDRH; and some of CBER's most pressing technological needs. See here for more in-depth information about the meetings and a full participant list from the FDA.

Next Steps

Following these meetings, there will be several more opportunities for NIO supporters to promote the NNTI within Congress (stay tuned for more on how you can specifically help) as well as form key working groups to strengthen our burgeoning alliances with the FDA and CMS.

I'd like to thank all of our participants and partners who worked so hard to make this event such a success. Without the commitment from Accera, Adlyfe, Advanced Neuromodulation Systems, Alseres Pharmaceuticals, BiotechPartnering Solutions, Boston Scientific, Brain Aneurysm Foundation, Cogmed America, Cognitive Drug Research, CorTechs Labs, Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems, Epilepsy Study Consortium, Feinstein Kean Healthcare, International Neuromodulation Society, Kappametrics, K&L Gates, KidsDx, Medtronic, NeuroInsights, NeuroNexus Technologies, NeuroScience Associates, Neurotech Development Foundation, Neurotech Network, Neurotech Reports, North American Neuromodulation Society, Pfizer, PhotoThera, Posit Science, and Sound Pharmaceuticals, this would never have been possible.

I look forward to working with each of you again - and those of you unable to attend this year - on NIO's third annual public policy tour of Washington DC in March 2009.

For those of you unable to make the Brain Fitness Panel last week, a video of the entire 1.5 hour panel is available now on the web. If you are at all interested in the space, I recommend picking up a cup of tea and watching the whole thing. The panel answered many crucial questions regarding the growth, development and future of this emerging neurotech market. On a related note, one of the panel companies, Dakim, just announced the closing of a $10.6M Series C. Another good sign that this market is gaining traction.

Neuroethics, the journal that Adam Kolber edits, will be launched next month at the Pacific APA in Pasadena. The journal will provide free access to the full text of all articles published in 2008 and 2009, and most of the first issue is already available online. Adam also writes the Neuroethics and Law blog.

Update: Just got a note from Adam letting me know that the editor-in-chief of the Neuroethics Journal is Neil Levy. Neil is a guest blogger on the Neuroethics and Law blog. Adam is an associate editor of the Journal.

"The pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled." HBS

The NYTimes has a great neurofinance article today Craving the High That Risky Trading Can Bring that remarks on Jérôme Kerviel, the rogue trader at Société Générale, that recently lost $7 Billion. Jenny Anderson does a good job of interviewing the right people for the article including Stanford's Brian Knutson and MIT's Andrew Lo. Two characters I interview in my forthcoming book on the neurosociety.

Here is the buzz … Scientific, technological and demographic trends have converged to create an exciting new market in Brain fitness, where software and online applications can assess and train cognitive abilities. That equates to a sharper mind and better memory retention contributing to healthier aging.

Join me in a lively and informative discussion as Alvaro Fernandez; CEO of SharpBrains.com summarizes the science, key market segments, players and trends, based on the first Brain Fitness Software Market Report. He'll then join a panel I'm moderating which will include: Susannah Kirsch, Physic Ventures, Alex Doman, Advanced Brain Technologies, Kunal Sarkar, Lumos Labs, Dan Michel, Dakim. Topics up for discussion will include:

• What results are scientists discovering from the use of Brain Fitness tools?
• Who will use brain tools and why?
• What is the market potential for new companies entering the brain fitness market?
• What kind of Brain fitness applications are being developed.

Join me next Tuesday night to explore the latest advancements across the brain fitness software market, sponsored by The MIT Club of Northern California and SmartSilvers presents:
Date: Tuesday Evening, February 12, 2008
Location: Wilson Sonsini – 950 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto
Time: 6:00PM Registration, Hors d’oeuvres and Networking
7:00PM Presentation and Panel Discussion
Registration here.$20.00 in advance on the website $25.00 Walk-ins.

A six page conference summary from the European Neuroscience and Society Network conference I spoke in London last November has been published here. Here is a snippet (needless to say it was quite the thought provoking conference):

"The session that drew some of the most provocative dialogue of the meeting was the third, entitled, 'Neuroeconomies: markets, choice and the distribution of neurotechnologies.”..Lynch’s talk was followed by a lecture on the “the birth of neuroeconomy” by Dr Philippe Pignarre, who has often taken a critical approach to the commercial development of new technologies, and his talk thus offered a measured counterargument to the focus of Mr. Lynch. The talks in this session led to a productive and heated dialogue in the Q & A, with sociologists in the audience reflecting on the ways that both hype and hope are playing a productive role in fostering consumer expectations about the therapeutic benefit of new neurotechnologies."

Upcoming ENSN events are planned for 2008 and 2009:
1) "Our Brains, Our Selves?" Invitational Workshop co-hosted by the ENSN and the Department for the History and Philosophy of Science, Harvard University. May 1-3, 2008.
2)"ENSN Interdisciplinary Neuroschool" September 28-October 5, 2008. European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). Rome, Italy.
3)"Neurosocieties II: Second ENSN General Conference." Centro de Estudos Sociales, University of Coimbra, Portugal. April 2-4, 2009.

Also Germany just open up a Research Centre for Neurotechnology in Frankfurt/Main with funding totalling several million Euros over a period of five years.

Ron Leuty at The San Francisco Business Times interviewed me last week and the result was the following pithy article: Neuroscience organization bets big in capital: Industry group seeks $200M to research brain abnormalities

A young, San Francisco-based trade organization representing neuroscience companies has lined up companies nationally and heavy hitters in the nation's capital to lobby for a $200 million superfund to help bring products to market for brain and nervous system diseases ranging from Alzheimer's to insomnia.

The 17-month-old Neurotechnology Industry Organization is working with Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis LLP -- the New York law firm also known as K&L Gates, as in William Gates Sr., the father of Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates -- to push its plan in Washington, D.C.

The NIO's five-part plan, dubbed a "Human Genome Project for the brain" by Executive Director Zack Lynch, would earmark:

* $80 million for the National Institutes of Health's "Blueprint for Neuroscience Research," developed by 16 institutes that offer grants for neuroscience issues ranging from depression and Parkinson's Disease to spinal cord research and traumatic brain injury;
* $75 million to the NIH's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs for neuroscience startups and research;
* $30 million to increase staffing and training at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to reduce a regulatory bottleneck that has delayed approval of some therapies;
* $10 million a year for studying the societal implications -- including ethical and legal questions -- of advancing neurotechnologies; and
* $5 million annually for a national neurotechnology coordination office to aggregate what federal agencies as diverse as the NIH and the Department of Defense are doing in neurotech.

The plan would accelerate bringing neuroscience innovations to patient bedsides, Lynch said. Parts of the program, like SBIR and STTR, also would help create new companies in neurotech centers like the Bay Area, Lynch said.

This Saturday at UC Berkeley the Seventh International Conference on Neuroesthetics will feature renowned scientists discuss the brain’s responses to identity of faces, social perception, neural basis of facial expression processing and aesthetics of human faces. Talks have the following titles: "Perceiving the Actions, Goals and Intentions of Others: Brain Mechanisms for Social Perception", "Face blindness: the perceptual and neural bases of prosopagnosia", "The Gender, Ethnicity and Individual Identity of Faces", "In the Eye of the Beholder: How Personality Affects the Neural Basis of Facial Expression Processing", "Colour and Aesthetics of Human Faces", "Normal and abnormal face processing in human observers", "Neural basis of face perception in humans", "Make Faces: Automatically Transfer Expressions Between Characters." See you there.

This is some cool new software code that Yahoo! has made available for building your own stock tracking systems. This allows us to easily track the Nasdaq NeuroInsights Neurotech Index vs. the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index vs. the Nasdaq Composite.

"Forget sports doping. The next frontier is brain doping," reports Karen Kaplan at the LA Times. "As Major League Baseball struggles to rid itself of performance-enhancing drugs, people in a range of other fields are reaching for a variety of prescription pills to enhance what counts most in modern life.

Despite the potential side effects, academics, classical musicians, corporate executives, students and even professional poker players have embraced the drugs to clarify their minds, improve their concentration or control their emotions. "There isn't any question about it -- they made me a much better player," said Paul Phillips, 35, who credited the attention deficit drug Adderall and the narcolepsy pill Provigil with helping him earn more than $2.3 million as a poker player."

The story goes on to discuss the neuroethical consequences of brain doping and ponders the inevitable epidemic of use which would occur should a cognitive enhancer be developed. There is far too much for humanity to gain here. It is only a matter of time before one of the 50 companies worldwide or one of the many more research labs currently focused on creating cogniceuticals for treatments more memory maladies strikes gold and the world shifts towards neuroenablement. (Hat Tip to Nils for the pointer)

There is no mistaking the progress: 2007 was an excellent year for the Neurotechnology Industry Organization! Our public policy agenda and public relations efforts made significant headway throughout the year and we look to build on this momentum in 2008.

Since our founding just sixteen months ago, over 60 organizations have joined our mission to accelerate the development of treatments for the brain and nervous system. As the only trade association representing companies involved in neuroscience (drugs, devices and diagnostics), brain research centers and patient advocacy groups, NIO is quickly becoming a powerful agent for change.

NIO's primary purpose is to increase awareness of neurotechnologies, reduce barriers to innovation, and support industry growth. With this in mind, I'd like to share with you some of our key activities from 2007, NIO's first full year in operation, and preview what's to come in 2008.

Read Full Review and Look Forward on NIO's website here. If you ever wonder why my blogging has slowed down it is because I'm spending nearly all my time on these projects.

The 7th Year in Ideas from the New York Times highlights "neurorealism". Matthew Hutson writes:

You’ve seen the headlines: This Is Your Brain on Politics. Or God. Or Super Bowl Ads. And they’re always accompanied by pictures of brains dotted with seemingly significant splotches of color. Now some scientists have seen enough. We’re like moths, they say, lured by the flickering lights of neuroimaging — and uncritically accepting of conclusions drawn from it.

A paper published online in September by the journal Cognition shows that assertions about psychology — even implausible ones like “watching television improved math skills” — seem much more believable to laypeople when accompanied by images from brain scans. And a paper accepted for publication by The Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience demonstrates that adding even an extraneous reference to the brain to a bad explanation of human behavior makes the explanation seem much more satisfying to nonexperts.

Eric Racine, a bioethicist at the Montreal Clinical Research Institute, coined the word neurorealism to describe this form of credulousness. In an article called “fMRI in the Public Eye,” he and two colleagues cited a Boston Globe article about how high-fat foods activate reward centers in the brain. The Globe headline: “Fat Really Does Bring Pleasure.” Couldn’t we have proved that with a slice of pie and a piece of paper with a check box on it? ”

As someone who has promulgated a bit of neuro'un'realism during the first few years of this blog, I agree with Racine's analysis. This is why you haven't seen me blog over the past several about articles in the popular press which stretch the implications of neuroscience research. As I've learned more about the technology, I've developed a more scrupulous eye and it is with this more neurorealistic perspective that I am writing my book on the societal implications of neurotechnologies. It's a fine balance between guesstimating how technologies might advance and understanding why they won't, a balancing act I am working hard at nailing down so you won't have to.

More posts on the topic here and here. More mind and brain ideas in this year's ideas can be found here.

Believe in yourself. Don’t take no for an answer. Never quit. Don’t accept second best. These are all wise words of wisdom, unless you adopt them across all aspects of your life. This is the take home message of a story written by Benedict Carey in today's NYTimes wherein he explores how "perfectionism is a valuable lens through which to understand a variety of seemingly unrelated mental difficulties, from depression to compulsive behavior to addiction."

"Several recent studies stand as a warning against taking the platitudes of achievement too seriously. The new research focuses on a familiar type, perfectionists, who panic or blow a fuse when things don’t turn out just so....'It’s natural for people to want to be perfect in a few things, say in their job — being a good editor or surgeon depends on not making mistakes,' said Gordon L. Flett, a psychology professor at York University and an author of many of the studies. “It’s when it generalizes to other areas of life, home life, appearance, hobbies, that you begin to see real problems.”

He concludes..."The British have a saying that encourages people to show their skills while mocking the universal fear of failure: Do your worst. If you can’t tolerate your worst, at least once in a while, how true to yourself can you be?"

"An ambitious project to create an accurate computer model of the brain has reached an impressive milestone, writes today's Technology Review. "Scientists in Switzerland working with IBM researchers have shown that their computer simulation of the neocortical column, arguably the most complex part of a mammal's brain, appears (emphasis added) to behave like its biological counterpart. By demonstrating that their simulation is realistic, the researchers say, these results suggest that an entire mammal brain could be completely modeled within three years, and a human brain within the next decade.

"What we're doing is reverse-engineering the brain," says Henry Markram, codirector of the Brain Mind Institute at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, in Switzerland, who led the work, called the Blue Brain project, which began in 2005. By mimicking the behavior of the brain down to the individual neuron, the researchers aim to create a modeling tool that can be used by neuroscientists to run experiments, test hypotheses, and analyze the effects of drugs more efficiently than they could using real brain tissue. The model of part of the brain was completed last year, says Markram. But now, after extensive testing comparing its behavior with results from biological experiments, he is satisfied that the simulation is accurate enough that the researchers can proceed with the rest of the brain."

The article goes onto to share the response of Christof Koch from Caltech who calls the 10 year target of modeling the human brain "ridiculous." Despite the fantastic progress to date I agree with Christof on this.

(Associated graphic is a representation of a mammalian neocortical column, the basic building block of the cortex. The representation shows the complexity of this part of the brain, which has now been modeled using a supercomputer. Credit: BBP/EPFL) Looks kind of like a Jackson Pollock painting.

Tech Confidential writes a smart piece on how the Staglins are firmly behind neurotech.

"The best hope for curing mental illness is neurotechnology," says Staglin Family Vineyard owner Garen Staglin, who with wife Shari stopped by our office recently to discuss their efforts to raise funds for mental health research and their hopes for neurotech companies. This class of biotechnology firm develops drugs, devices and diagnostics to fight a range of neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia.... Meanwhile, the family has raised $53 million for brain research, through efforts including the annual Music Festival for Mental Health, held each September at their Napa Valley vineyard (where, incidentally, the Lindsay Lohan re-make of "The Parent Trap" was filmed). Among the biggest contributors to their efforts are venture capitalists Larry Mohr of Mohr Davidow Ventures, Joe Schoendorf of Accel Partners and Silicon Valley Bank CEO Ken Wilcox.

Check out the cover story of Medical Product Outsourcing magazine in December for an extensive article on the neurodevice sector titled Brain Power. Among the topics covered are the Neurotech Industry Organization's National Neurotechnology Initiative, the Neurotech Index and the an overview of neurodevice markets. From the article:

"In the neurodevice sector, three major markets have emerged, according to Lynch. The largest is the $2.5 billion neurosurgical market, consisting of tools used for procedures such as tumor removals or neurovascular interventions (such as to treat stroke victims) using coils, balloons, stents and other products. Neuromodulation, which encompasses stimulation devices used to restore function, is a $1.38 billion market. The final category is neuroprosthetics, a $540 million market consisting of products such as cochlear implants for hearing-impaired individuals, implants for spinal injuries and retinal implants (still in development). In addition to these markets, another emerging area is neurosoftware. Although it’s currently a small segment ($75 million in 2006), several companies are working on software for use leveraging neuroplasticity and neurofeedback, among others, said Lynch.

“One thing that’s interesting in the neurodevice market is there’s no one company that participates in all four segments. There’s no gorilla in the marketplace,” Lynch said. As a result of all the potential innovation in this somewhat untapped market, Lynch believes the industry will see “a flowering” of many startups in the neurodevice sector."

I am off to London to speak at the first Neurosocieties conference sponsored by the European Neuroscience and Society Network (ENSN) to be held at the London School of Economics in the Regent's College Conference Center. It's hard to believe that it was only a five years ago when the notion of an emerging neurosociety was just a vague concept and now there is a 5-year funded project by the European Science Foundation to analyze the societal implications of neuroscience.

The chair of the ENSN, Nikolas Rose asked me several months ago to come and talk about the neuroeconomies aspect of the neurosociety along with Dr. Philippe Pignarre(University of Paris). The first day there will be three plenary sessions which will cover Public Health and the politics of the neurosciences with speakers Professor Kent Woods (Chief Executive Officer, UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency) and Mathilde Leonardi (Neurological Institute Carlo Besta, Italy); Sources of the neurochemical self: consciousness, personhood and difference with Alexandre Mauron (University of Geneva) and Neuroeconomies: markets, choice and distribution of neurotechnologies which Pignarre and myself will be speaking on. The second day will begin with a series of workshops on these subjects followed by a fourth Plenary session on Neuroscience and Society: Future Directions in Europe led by Steven Rose, Open University and Alain Ehrenburg. Overall, it looks to be a fantastic gathering that has been sold out for the past several weeks. Can't wait!

The Neurotechnology Industry Organization developed this “top ten” list of emerging areas of neuroscience that will impact the future of treatments for brain and nervous system in anticipation of cutting edge research being presented at The Society for Neuroscience Conference being held in San Diego, California, November 3-7. NIO will be hosting a booth (#4311) and neurotech industry partnering social at the conference. Stop by for a visit.

Top 10 Trends of 2007:
1. Advancing discovery tools underpin innovation: Beyond biochips and brain imaging, recent advances in neuroinformatics, image-based neural circuit analysis, and neural computation are accelerating the pace of neuroscientific discovery beyond what was imagined a decade ago.
2. Neuroimmunology leading to new treatment targets: The discovery that immune molecules play a crucial role in shaping neuronal connections opens up new treatment targets for Alzheimer’s, autism, ALS, Parkinson’s, schizophrenia, and nerve injury.
3. National Neurotechnology Initiative - Momentum for the new $200M/year federal R&D initiative aimed at accelerating translational neurotech innovation and improving the effectiveness of FDA review process for neuroscience drugs, devices and diagnostics grows.
4. Neurodevice interfaces improve prosthetics and treatments - Advanced brain-machine interfaces (BMI) enable the severely handicapped to independently compose e-mails and operate a TV in their homes. Other neurodevices provide functional stimulation for the treatment of pain, Parkinson’s, obesity, and psychiatric disorders.
5. Addiction advances: New research clarifies the role of drugs on sleep, cocaine’s potency, and the brain changes that occur due to abuse leading to new treatment strategies for this epidemic impacting over 1.1 billion worldwide.
6. Normal aging brain gets more attention: More research and development is being focused on thinking impairments that only partially limit independence and quality of life for senior citizens, adults and school aged children. Neurosoftware will penetrate nursing homes and schools, as brain fitness software becomes new first-line treatment strategy.
7. Regenerating the spinal cord: New experimental therapies in development could open the doors for research to improve treatments for people with spinal cord injuries, brain injuries, stroke, and other severe movement disorders
8. Prevention evidence grows: You are what you eat; smoking is as bad as we thought; and new studies reveal the effects of environmental substances on Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and others.
9. Emotional disorders research advances: New research continues to link neurogenesis to treatment of depression. A better understanding of PTSD should lead to new treatment regimes.
10. Neuroscience infiltrates society: From neuroeconomics to neuroesthetics to neuroethics and neurolaw, the influence of neuroscience on society continues to grow.

Advances across a wide spectrum of neuroscience research are making possible the development of more effective treatments for the nearly 100 million Americans and 2 billion people worldwide that currently suffer from brain-related illnesses.

If you look at the above images from your seat in front of the computer, Mr. Angry is on the left, and Ms.Calm is on the right. Now, get up from your seat, and move back 10 or 12 feet, and PRESTO!! they switch places!! It is said this illusion was created by Phillippe G.Schyns and Aude Oliva. Hat Tip to Dan.

"The subject areas that qualify as neuroscience are as far-reaching and as interconnected as neurons themselves. Consequently, neuroscientists often work on questions that span several distinct subfields. Many neuroscience programs are interdepartmental and take on the structure of an institute rather than a department." Emma Hitt writes a good overview of careers in neuroscience for Science magazine this week in Careers in Neuroscience: From Protons to Poetry. My three cents was that a strong demand exists for people with regulatory and clinical trial management expertise related to neurological diseases and psychiatric illnesses. For jobs in the neurotech industry check out NIO's job board.

"Whatever path a student decides upon, neuroscience is replete with opportunities for graduate students and postdocs who have given thought to planning their career path. People who are just entering into this field will be the Nobel Prize winners of this next generation, says Insel. "This really is the place for the brightest and the best students to jump in because we know so little, and the opportunities are so great."

MIT researchers have developed a new algorithm to help create prosthetic devices that convert brain signals into action in patients who have been paralyzed or had limbs amputated. The technique, described in a paper published as the cover article in the October edition of the Journal of Neurophysiology, unifies seemingly disparate approaches taken by experimental groups that prototype these neural prosthetic devices in animals or humans. "The work represents an important advance in our understanding of how to construct algorithms in neural prosthetic devices for people who cannot move to act or speak," said Lakshminarayan "Ram" Srinivasan, lead author of the paper.

The Neuroethics Society mission is to promote the development and responsible application of neuroscience through better understanding of its capabilities and its consequences. The Society currently invites undergraduate students in relevant fields to join as members.

“Neuroscience could have an impact on the legal system that is as dramatic as DNA testing,” MacArthur President Jonathan Fanton said. “Neuroscientists need to understand law, and lawyers need to understand neuroscience." Putting their money where it counts, the MacArthur Foundation has funded The Law and Neuroscience Project to the tune of $10M for the next three years. The project includes three research networks on these central aspects of criminal responsibility: diminished brains, addiction, and medically normal decision-making. Each network is co-directed by a neuroscientist and a legal expert.

Proponents of neuroscientific evidence say it can help make the judicial system more accurate and less biased on matters of guilt, punishment, and treatment, on the detection of lies and bias, and in the prediction of criminal behavior. They believe the result could be less crime and fewer people in prisons. Skeptics fear that brain-imaging technology poses a threat to privacy and notions of personal responsibility. Both scientists and legal scholars warn that failing to properly integrate neuroscience and law could harm the legal system by sending the wrong people to prison, and by creating skepticism about some of the law’s basic assumptions.

“Neuroscientific evidence has already been used to persuade jurors in sentencing decisions, and courts have admitted brain-imaging evidence during criminal trials to support pleas of insanity,” said Michael Gazzaniga, co-director of the project. “Without a solid, mutual understanding of each others’ fields, lawyers and judges cannot respond in an informed way to developments in neuroscience, and scientists cannot properly advise lawyers or recognize the legal relevance of their current and future research.”

The Gruter Institute will lead the education and outreach work under the grant, overseeing numerous yearly conferences aimed at educating state and federal judges and others in the legal arena about neuroscientific findings relevant to the law. This agenda has been a long time coming and the Gruter Institute has played a major role over the past two decades in cultivating these important memes. Kudos to Gruter and the rest of the scholars involved in helping us prepare for our emerging neurosociety.

I've recently joined the advisory board of a new publication called Science Progress which aims to influence US public policy by embracing the best of American scientific and political thought. On the website you can find several interesting articles including a piece by Vint Cerf who reflects forward on our nation’s incredible ability to respond swiftly to complex scientific challenges as well as an op-ed article that I wrote, BrainTech is Here: Neurotechnology Leaves the Nest but Waits for Policy Push, where I attempt to succinctly explain the reasons why we need a National Neurotechnology Initiative. Here is the beginning of the article, I recommend reading the rest on Science Progress.

There’s no mistaking the progress. Neurotechnology—the tools to treat and understand the brain and nervous system—holds the potential to transform nearly every aspect of our lives and revolutionize our conception of the human mind.

Imagine walking into a doctor’s office where an advanced brain scanning system can detect cellular-level changes that signal the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, years before any physical or mental symptoms manifest. You and your loved ones’ quality of life could then be extended by decades with a treatment plan personalized to your specific case. Today, brain imaging technologies such as this are only just beginning to illuminate the causes of brain-related illnesses. But a wide chasm must still be crossed if we are to develop effective treatments for the nearly 100 million Americans and 2 billion people worldwide that currently suffer from brain illnesses such as Alzheimer’s.

The annual national economic burden of brain-related disorders has reached over $1 trillion (see chart) and is growing alarmingly due to an aging population. While research into the brain and brain-related illnesses is moving forward more rapidly than any other science today, our understanding of how the brain works still has many gaps and our ability to repair damage remains limited. Critical unmet medical needs exist in almost every area of brain and nervous system disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease, addiction, anxiety, autism, depression, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, obesity, Parkinson’s disease, pain, sensory disorders, spinal cord injury, stroke, schizophrenia, sleep disorders, and traumatic brain injury.

Investigation into the mechanisms and functions of the brain will lead to vastly improved understanding of brain disease and injuries, human cognition and behavior, and will give us an unprecedented ability to treat and heal those in need, as well as begin to reduce this growing burden on our economy. But all of this won’t happen on its own.... (read on)

The Milken Institute released an impressive study that demonstrates the heavy economic burden chronic disease places on our nation. “An Unhealthy America: The Economic Burden of Chronic Disease” shows the current treatment costs of seven chronic diseases (cancers, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, stroke, mental disorders and pulmonary conditions) and the economic impacts of lost workdays and lower employee productivity across all 50 states and the nation as a whole. The study finds that the annual economic impact on the U.S. economy of the most common chronic diseases is more than $1 trillion, and could reach nearly $6 trillion by the middle of the century. This study will be an important addition to the ongoing debate over the costs of health care in the United States, and what can be done to reduce this economic burden.