[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE FRONTIERS OF
HUMAN BRAIN RESEARCH
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
WEDNESDAY, JULY 31, 2013
__________
Serial No. 113-45
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
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Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
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COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair
DANA ROHRABACHER, California EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
RALPH M. HALL, Texas ZOE LOFGREN, California
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
Wisconsin DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma FREDERICA S. WILSON, Florida
RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas ERIC SWALWELL, California
PAUL C. BROUN, Georgia DAN MAFFEI, New York
STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
MO BROOKS, Alabama JOSEPH KENNEDY III, Massachusetts
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois SCOTT PETERS, California
LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana DEREK KILMER, Washington
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
BILL POSEY, Florida ELIZABETH ESTY, Connecticut
CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming MARC VEASEY, Texas
DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona JULIA BROWNLEY, California
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky MARK TAKANO, California
KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota ROBIN KELLY, Illinois
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma
RANDY WEBER, Texas
CHRIS STEWART, Utah
VACANCY
------
Subcommittee on Research and Technology
HON. LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana, Chair
STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
MO BROOKS, Alabama FEDERICA WILSON, Florida
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois ZOE LOFGREN, California
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas SCOTT PETERS, California
CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming AMI BERA, California
DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona DEREK KILMER, Washington
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky ELIZABETH ESTY, Connecticut
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma ROBIN KELLY, Illinois
LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
C O N T E N T S
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Page
Witness List..................................................... 2
Hearing Charter.................................................. 3
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Larry Bucshon, Chairman, Subcommittee
on Research and Technology, Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...................... 7
Written Statement............................................ 8
Statement by Representative Daniel Lipinski, Ranking Minority
Member, Subcommittee on Research and Technology, Committee on
Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.. 8
Written Statement............................................ 9
Statement by Representative Steve Stockman, Subcommittee on
Research and Technology, Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...................... 10
Written Statement............................................ 11
Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking
Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House
of Representatives............................................. 50
Written Statement............................................ 51
Witnesses:
Dr. Story Landis, Director of National Institute of Neurological
Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health
Oral Statement............................................... 12
Written Statement............................................ 16
Mr. Michael McLoughlin, Deputy Business Area Executive, Research
and Exploratory Development at Applied Physics Laboratory,
Johns Hopkins University
Oral Statement............................................... 27
Written Statement............................................ 29
U.S. Air Force Master Sergeant Joseph Deslauriers Jr.
Oral Statement............................................... 35
Dr. Marcus Raichle, Professor of Radiology, Neurology,
Neurobiology and Biomedical Engineering, Washington University
Oral Statement............................................... 35
Written Statement............................................ 38
Dr. Gene Robinson, Director, Institute for Genomic Biology,
Swanlund Chair, Center for Advanced Study Professor in
Entomology and Neuroscience, University of Illinois, Urbana-
Champaign
Oral Statement............................................... 42
Written Statement............................................ 44
Discussion....................................................... 49
Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Dr. Story Landis, Director of National Institute of Neurological
Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health............ 62
Dr. Marcus Raichle, Professor of Radiology, Neurology,
Neurobiology and Biomedical Engineering, Washington University. 69
Dr. Gene Robinson, Director, Institute for Genomic Biology,
Swanlund Chair, Center for Advanced Study Professor in
Entomology and Neuroscience, University of Illinois, Urbana-
Champaign University........................................... 73
Appendix I: Additional Material for the Record
Submitted statement by Representative Lamar Smith, Chairman,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 76
THE FRONTIERS OF HUMAN BRAIN RESEARCH
----------
WEDNESDAY, JULY 31, 2013
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Research and Technology
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 11:06 a.m., in
Room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Larry
Bucshon [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Bucshon. The Subcommittee on Research and
Technology will come to order.
Good morning. Welcome to today's hearing entitled ``The
Frontiers of Human Brain Research.'' In front of you are
packets containing the written testimony, biographies, and
truth-in-testimony disclosures of today's witnesses.
I now recognize myself for an opening statement.
I would like to welcome everyone to today's Research and
Technology Subcommittee hearing on the frontiers of human brain
research. As a doctor, I know firsthand there are many
complexities surrounding the human body and understanding the
human brain is one of the most challenging problems facing the
scientific and medical communities. This problem will likely
require an interdisciplinary and multifaceted approach with the
right scientific questions being asked and debated and clear
goals and endpoints being articulated. The creative drive of
American science is the individual investigator, and I have
faith they will continue to tackle, understand, and contribute
original approaches to these problems.
We are hopeful that brain research will have important
policy implications. Brain disorders such as Alzheimer's,
Parkinson's, autism, epilepsy, dementia, stroke, and traumatic
brain injury have an enormous economic and personal impact for
the affected Americans. For example, Alzheimer's disease, a
severe form of dementia and the sixth leading cause of death in
the United States, affects the 5.1 million Americans that have
the disease along with their friends and family who watch their
loved one suffer from its effects. And my best friend from high
school's grandmother was one of those people.
I want to stress the personal effect of this research,
which to me is much more important as a medical doctor but
cannot be easily quantified. During my visits to Walter Reed
Medical Center and subsequently Bethesda after Walter Reed
closed, I have met with many brave young men and women who
unfortunately have suffered traumatic brain injury as well as
lost limbs because of their service to our country in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Technologies, like the ones we will hear about
today, will allow these young men and women to transition to
the workplace, enabling these individuals to lead productive,
independent, and fulfilling lives. This is why I think it is so
important to continue to support research.
I want to stress my support for brain science research, in
particular understanding neurological disorders and diseases
from an interdisciplinary perspective. As our witnesses will
testify today, brain science has benefited enormously from
fields as diverse as applied mathematics, computer science,
physics, engineering, molecular biology, and chemistry. More
importantly, basic science research results from NSF-funded
research will be the future experimental tools for hypothesis-
based, data-driven research for brain science researchers.
I see this as an important opportunity for continuing
interdisciplinary work between the various Federal science
agencies, including NSF, NIH, and DARPA and I hope to see more
collaboration and productive research opportunities.
Our witnesses today reflect the wide spectrum of research
in brain science and the richness in this field. I would like
to thank the witnesses for being here today and taking the time
to offer their perspectives on this important topic. At this
point, I also would like to thank Ranking Member Lipinski and
everyone else for participating in today's hearing.
And I will now recognize Ranking Member Lipinski for his
opening statement.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Bucshon follows:]
Prepared Statement of Subcommittee on Research and Technology Chairman
Larry Bucshon
I would like to welcome everyone to today's Research and Technology
Subcommittee hearing on the frontiers of human brain research.
As a doctor, I know firsthand there are many complexities
surrounding the human body and understanding the human brain is one of
the most challenging problems facing the scientific and medical
communities. This problem will likely require an inter-disciplinary and
multifaceted approach with the right scientific questions being asked
and debated and clear goals and endpoints being articulated. The
creative drive of American science is the individual investigator, and
I have faith they will continue to tackle, understand and contribute
original approaches to these problems.
We are hopeful that brain research will have important policy
implications. Brain disorders such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, autism,
epilepsy, dementia, stroke, and traumatic brain injury have an enormous
economic and personal impact for affected Americans.
For example, Alzheimer's disease--a severe form of dementia and the
sixth leading cause of death in the US--affects the 5.1 million
Americans that have the disease along with their friends and family who
watch their loved one suffer from its effects. The average annual cost
of care for people with dementia over 70 in the US was roughly between
$157 and $210 billion dollars in 2010.
More importantly, I want to stress the personal effect of this
research, which to me is much more important as a medical doctor, but
cannot be easily quantified. During my visits to Walter Reed Medical
Hospital, I have met many brave young men and women who have
unfortunately lost their arms and legs in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Technologies, like the ones we will hear about today, will allow these
young men and women to transition to the workplace, enabling these
individuals to lead productive, independent, and fulfilling lives. This
is why I think it's so important to continue supporting this research.
I want to stress my support for brain science research, in
particular understanding neurological disorders and diseases from an
interdisciplinary perspective. As our witnesses will testify today,
brain science has benefited enormously from fields as diverse as
applied mathematics, computer science, physics, engineering, molecular
biology, and chemistry. More importantly, basic science research
results from NSF funded research will be the future experimental tools
for hypothesis-based data-driven research for brain science
researchers.
I see this as an important opportunity for continuing
interdisciplinary work between the various federal science agencies,
including the NSF, NIH and DARPA and I hope to see more collaboration
and productive research opportunities
Our witnesses today reflect the wide spectrum of research in brain
science and richness in this field. I'd like to thank the witnesses for
being here today and taking time to offer their perspectives on this
important topic. I'd also like to thank Ranking Member Lipinski and
everyone else participating in today's hearing.Before I conclude
today's hearing, I would like to recognize and thank Melia Jones. I
appreciate your work on this Subcommittee for the last 2 years, and
wish you all the best in your future endeavors. We hate to lose you,
but Texas will gain a good friend.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, Chairman Bucshon, for holding this
hearing and to all the witnesses for being here today. And I
thank you for your flexibility in moving this hearing back an
hour.
I don't think there is anyone in this room who hasn't
marveled at the complexity of the human brain. I know opening
up with that sentence lends itself to a lot of jokes about
Congress, so you can insert your own joke here, but what we are
really concerned about are brain diseases especially that
befall so many people. And we all know it may one day wreak
havoc on our own lives, in addition to that, obviously other
brain injuries that occur. And especially as lawmakers, we are
responsible for making sure our returning servicemen and women
are taken care of after they have so bravely risked their own
lives, especially we worry about the thousands of returning
from Iraq and Afghanistan and previous conflicts with traumatic
brain injury and long-term mental distress.
In April of this year, President Obama announced the BRAIN
Initiative, an interagency collaboration between DARPA, NIH,
and NSF to accelerate what we know about human brain function
and its connection to behavior. Each of these agencies has
important research activities that it can bring to the table.
The NSF, for example, will help further research developing
probes on a molecular scale that can map the activity of neural
networks. They can also bring computer scientists to the task
as well to help understand the functions of the estimated 100
billion neurons and 100 trillion connections within the human
brain.
As we take a broad look at Federal support for neuroscience
research in general and the BRAIN Initiative in particular, I
believe it is valuable for the Members of this Committee to
hear from experts who can speak to the roles of all key
agencies, including DARPA and NIH. Three of the witnesses are
highly qualified to speak to NIH's role. Mr. McLoughlin has
long been funded by DARPA.
However, the only BRAIN Initiative agency wholly within
this Committee's jurisdiction is the National Science
Foundation. It is unfortunate that the NSF was not invited to
participate on today's panel, but I am especially grateful to
Dr. Robinson for being here today to help us better understand
NSF's unique and important role in supporting neuroscience
research. And I know that Chairman Bucshon had duly noted the
important role of NSF in his opening statement.
The idea of connecting what is happening in our brain at
the molecular level with how we feel, think, and remember and
act is known as integrating across scales. We can bring to the
neuroscience table all the smart computer scientists,
engineers, and mathematicians we can find, and we do need them,
but if we don't also have the behavioral experts there to
validate brain function models with what we know about actual
human behavior, those models might not be worth the laptops
they are written on.
As the one agency that funds basic research in all fields
of science and engineering, including the social and behavioral
sciences, integrating across scales is one of the strengths
that NSF brings to the BRAIN Initiative.
While none of the witnesses were asked to address
educational needs and opportunities in neuroscience, this is
also an area in which NSF leads the way. And I have some
questions related to STEM Ed, and I suspect some of my
colleagues will as well.
Thank you again to Chairman Bucshon for holding this
hearing and I look forward to the testimony and the discussion.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lipinski follows:]
Prepared Statement of Subcommittee on Research and Technology
Ranking Minority Member Daniel Lipinski
Thank you Chairman Bucshon for holding this hearing and to all of
the witnesses for being here.
I don't think there's anybody in this room who hasn't marveled at
the complexity of the human brain. With that wonder also comes worry
about the brain diseases that befall so many people, and that we all
know could someday wreak havoc on our own lives. And as lawmakers
responsible for making sure our returning servicemen and women are
taken care of after they have bravely risked their own lives, we worry
about the thousands who have returned from Iraq, Afghanistan, and
previous conflicts with traumatic brain injury and long-term mental
distress.
In April of this year, President Obama announced the BRAIN
Initiative, an interagency collaboration between DARPA, NIH, and NSF to
accelerate what we know about human brain function and its connection
to behavior. Each of these agencies has important research activities
that it can bring to the table. The NSF, for example, will help further
research developing probes on a molecular scale that can map the
activity of neural networks. They can also bring computer scientists to
the task as well, to help understand the functions of the estimated 100
billion neurons and 100 trillion connections within the human brain.
As we take a broad look at federal support for neuroscience
research in general, and the BRAIN Initiative in particular, I believe
that it is valuable for the Members of this Committee to hear from
experts who can speak to the roles of all key agencies, including DARPA
and NIH. Three of the witnesses are highly qualified to speak to NIH's
role, and Mr. McLoughlin has long been funded by DARPA. However, the
only BRAIN Initiative agency wholly within this Committee's
jurisdiction is the National Science Foundation. It is unfortunate that
NSF was not invited to participate on today's panel, but I am
especially grateful to Dr. Robinson for being here to help us better
understand NSF's unique and important role in supporting neuroscience
research.
The idea of connecting what's happening in our brain at the
molecular level with how we feel, think, remember, and act is known as
``integrating across scales.'' We can bring to the neuroscience table
all of the smart computer scientists, engineers, and mathematicians we
can find. And we do need them. But if we don't also have the behavioral
experts there to validate brain function models with what we know about
actual human behavior, those models might not be worth the laptops
they're written on.
As the one agency that funds basic research in all fields of
science and engineering, including the social and behavioral sciences,
integrating across scales is one of the strengths that NSF brings to
the BRAIN Initiative. While none of the witnesses were asked to address
educational needs and opportunities in neuroscience, this is also an
area in which NSF leads the way. I have questions related to STEM
education and I suspect some of my colleagues will as well.
Thank you again Chairman Bucshon for holding this hearing and I
look forward to the testimony and discussion.
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you.
I now recognize Mr. Stockman.
Mr. Stockman. I just want to thank the Chairman, Mr.
Bucshon, for doing this. And as I mentioned to you earlier, I
took care of my father for eight years who had Alzheimer's,
and, as you know, some say that disease is hereditary, so hurry
up and do your work.
And the other thing is that I was listening to National
Public Radio which commented on the President's Initiative, and
I hope that it is more than just window dressing that we have
here and that we have real research. I appreciate you coming
out today and I really appreciate the Ranking Member and the
Chairman for having this hearing. I yield back. Thank you.
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you. If there are Members who wish
to submit additional opening statements, your statements will
be added to the record at this point.
At this time I am now going to introduce our witnesses.
Our first witness today is Dr. Story Landis. Since 2003,
she has been the Director of the National Institute of
Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Prior to her appointment at
NINDS for short, she was a Professor and Chairwoman of the
Department of Neurosciences at Case Western Reserve University
School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio. She has made many
fundamental contributions to understanding the developmental
interactions required for synapse formation. I understand that
but many in the room may not. But she is an elected fellow of
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Institute of
Medicine for the National Academy of Sciences.
Our second witness today is Dr. Michael McLoughlin who is a
Deputy Business Area Executive for the Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Laboratory Research and Exploratory
Development--in the exploratory development area. In addition
to this position, Mr. McLoughlin teaches both program
management and systems engineering at Johns Hopkins University
Whiting School of Engineering. In 2009 he assumed leadership
responsibilities for DARPA's revolutionizing prosthetics
program and is leading efforts to transition use of these
technologies to human subjects. Mr. McLoughlin is a graduate of
the University of Delaware where he received both his
bachelor's and master's degrees.
Also with him is Air Force Master Sergeant Joseph
Deslauriers, an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician who also
will be giving a short testimony on how some of these
technologies have impacted the quality of his own life. He
earned the Silver Star for Gallantry in Action while serving in
Afghanistan on September 23, 2011.
Our third witness is Professor Marcus Raichle, who is
currently the Professor of Radiology, Neurology, Neurobiology
and Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St.
Louis. Professor Raichle has led world-class efforts to define
the frontiers of cognitive neuroscience through the development
and use of functional brain imaging techniques. He has also
pioneered the concept of the default mode of brain function and
has invigorated studies of intrinsic functional activity.
Professor Raichle is a member of the U.S. Academy of Science,
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute of
Medicine.
And our final witness is Professor Gene Robinson, who
received his doctorate degree from Cornell in 1986, and since
1989 has been on the faculty of the University of Illinois in
Urbana-Champaign where he is the University Swanlund Chair and
the Director for Genomic Biology. He has pioneered the
application of genomics to the study of behavior. He is the
author or co-author of over 250 publications. Professor
Robinson is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Science
and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In addition, he
received the National Institute's Pioneer Award.
Thanks again for all of our witnesses for being here this
afternoon. It is a very distinguished panel. I am looking
forward to your testimony.
As our witnesses should know, spoken testimony is limited
to five minutes after which the Members of the Committee will
have five minutes each to ask questions.
I now recognize Dr. Landis for five minutes to present her
testimony.
TESTIMONY OF DR. STORY LANDIS,
DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INSTITUTE
OF NEUROLOGICAL DISORDERS AND STROKE,
NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
Dr. Landis. Good morning, Chairman Bucshon, Ranking Member
Lipinski, and embers of the Subcommittee. I want to thank you
very much for your opportunity to provide testimony today on
the frontiers of human brain research. This is an incredibly
exciting area of research with profound implications for our
basic understanding of the brain and also for treating brain
disorders.
So as you have heard, many people regard understanding how
the human brain works as the last great frontier in biological
and biomedical sciences. The brain is an extraordinary organ
that allows us to see, hear, reason, remember. The best
estimates are that these functions and many others are
performed by somewhere between 80 and 100--100 billion nerve
cells that are connected with each other, each nerve cell,
neuron, making more than 1,000 connections with other neurons.
Now, it is not just chaos in the brain. These neurons are
organized in neural circuits. You could almost think of them as
living modifiable circuit boards which process and integrate
different kinds of information to control behavior, mental and
physical. And in fact, if you think about the brain, basically
the brain is the organ that controls all kinds of behavior.
In the past decade we have made extraordinary advances in
developing tools to visualize brain circuits and to dissect
their function. One of these tools is diffusion magnetic
resonance imaging, and this reveals medium to long-range
connections between brain regions and therefore provides a
wiring diagram of the human brain. And NIH is currently funding
the human brain Connectome Project to create a publicly
available database of wiring diagrams for 1,200 people, which
will serve as a resource for scientists throughout the world.
If I could have the slide please. Can you make it rotate?
[Slide.]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
This is one piece of the human Connectome that was obtained
as part of the Connectome Project. Each of those different-
colored fibers reflects a different set of connections. This is
only a subset of the connections and it is focused primarily on
the connections that actually wire together different parts of
the cortex. In other studies, we have learned how to actually
manipulate the function of neurons, specific populations of
neurons and circuits and to define their particular roles.
Now, neuroscience, the study of the brain, has from its
very earliest origins been multidisciplinary. Neuroanatomy and
neurophysiology and creating that image that you just saw
required physicists, engineers, mathematicians, statisticians,
as well as a neuroscientists. And just as the science is
multidisciplinary, support for brain science is provided by
multiple agencies as appropriate for their mission.
So consistent with the NIH's mission to seek fundamental
knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and
the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen
life, and reduce illness, NIH funds brain research from the
very most basic like ion channels and how neurons get generated
during development, how you turn stem cells into neurons to
Phase III clinical trials.
Now, my Institute, NINDS, funds research on a large number
of neurological disorders, including amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis--Lou Gehrig's disease--Parkinson's disease, and
Alzheimer's disease. These are inexorably progressive disorders
that take away our ability to move, reason, and remember. And
we also fund research on a host of rare diseases. We are making
progress. Stroke prevention and treatment reduced death from
stroke by 40 percent between 1999 and 2009. We have treatments
for multiple sclerosis that actually slow progression. We have
symptomatic treatments for Parkinson's and many effective drugs
that stop seizures.
The NINDS works closely with many other NIH institutes to
ensure that we are an aggregate making the best possible
investment in brain sciences. There are also strong and
effective collaborations between NIH and other agencies. Nine
NIH institutes and seven NSF directorates support an innovative
grant program, collaborative research, and computational
neuroscience, and this grant program requires a wet bench
experimentalist working with someone who is a theoretician.
So progress in understanding how the human brain works and
addressing diseases that affect the brain will require the
development of new tools to allow us to get a dynamic picture
of how the brain works in real time, how the individual cells
and complex neural circuits interact, and how do they do it at
the speed of thought? And we simply don't have the tools to
know how to do this. That is the goal of the BRAIN Initiative,
brain research advances through innovative neurotechnologies.
Thank you very much for your attention.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Landis follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you very much.
Now, I recognize Mr. McLoughlin for his testimony.
TESTIMONY OF MR. MICHAEL MCLOUGHLIN,
DEPUTY BUSINESS AREA EXECUTIVE,
RESEARCH AND EXPLORATORY DEVELOPMENT
AT APPLIED PHYSICS LABORATORY,
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
Mr. McLoughlin. Chairman Bucshon, Ranking Member Lipinski,
Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to
come and talk to you today and to tell you about some of the
progress that we have made in the area of brain-controlled
prosthetics.
This program was initiated in 2005 by DARPA to provide
enhanced capabilities for soldiers who had experienced upper
extremity amputations. We have also since included patient
populations that are affected by spinal cord injury or other
neurodegenerative conditions which prevent them from using
their natural limbs.
The objective of this program was to develop--is to develop
a prosthetic limb that really has all the capability of our
natural limb system. And so the challenge is to provide a level
of functionality that begins to rival that of what was lost due
to the amputation.
In conducting this work, we have had to work with--had the
fortune to work with multiple government agencies, including
the NIH, who you just heard from, as well as a team of
researchers across this country that have totaled over 30
different organizations that range from research groups doing
basic research to very applied engineering and to work across
those groups in order to solve this challenge.
So in other words, basically four major challenges that we
are addressing here, the first one was to develop a prosthetic
limb, as you see here, and that Sergeant Deslauriers is wearing
that can mimic the function of the natural arm. And we had to
do that in a form factor that matches the natural limb, so
tremendous set of engineering challenges here.
The second challenge was to be able to control the limb. So
we all do very complex things with our arms and we do it very
naturally. We don't even think about it. For a prosthetic user,
these become very difficult, requiring tremendous
concentration. And yet our brains do it every day without
thinking. So the major focus of our programs has been looking
at direct interfaces with the brain in order to control the
limb system.
The third area then is to provide sensation from the limb.
So we can all utilize our limbs without looking at them. So I
can reach out and grasp an object. I know where my arm is. I
know what it is touching. A prosthetic user cannot do that. So
what we are investigating is ways that we can feed information
back to the brain to provide sensory perception.
We have already demonstrated that for amputees, that
stimulation of the residual sensory nerves can provide very
vivid sensation to the level of the patient will actually say I
feel my finger, okay. I am not--I don't feel where you are
touching it; I feel my finger that was lost. We are beginning
now to explore how do we provide that same level of capability
to somebody that has a spinal cord injury that we can directly
input that information into the brain.
The last area is to provide a fundamental research
capability that can live beyond just what we are doing in this
program. It will provide a set of tools that can be used by
researchers and developers of new medical devices,
rehabilitative devices, in order to push the field of
neuroscience forward.
I would like to now show a quick video.
[Video.]
This is Tim Heans at the University of Pittsburgh, one of
our research participants. He was the first person to drive
this limb using just a brain computer interface. Tim was
injured in a motorcycle accident and is paralyzed from the neck
down, and he is controlling his arm strictly by thinking about
where he wants it to go. And so this is after about actually
just about a day of working with the arm. And here you see him
reaching out to one of the members of the research team, and
when his girlfriend saw this, she said I want to try this. And
so she got up and for the first time since his injury, Tim was
able to actually reach out and physically interact with another
human being. And this was a tremendous impact to Tim and to his
girlfriend. And Tim, when you hear him talk, will actually say
I will reach my arm out to touch her. So it gives you a sense
of the meaning to these patients.
[The prepared statement of Mr. McLoughlin follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. McLoughlin. I am very fortunate today to have with me
Master Sergeant Deslauriers, who has been one of our research
participants, and I would like to give him a moment to tell you
about his experiences working with the arm.
TESTIMONY OF U.S. AIR FORCE MASTER SERGEANT
JOSEPH DESLAURIERS JR.
Sergeant Deslauriers. Again, Chairman, I would like to echo
my thanks for the opportunity to speak with the panel today.
It has been about a year since I have been working with the
limb after my injury on September 23, 2011. When you lose three
limbs at once, it is very difficult to figure out how you are
going to interact with the world around you now. I was--I am a
husband, I am a father. How am I going to hold my child? How am
I going to interact? And when the opportunity came up to work
with the gentleman from Johns Hopkins University, I kind of
jumped at the chance to aid in the research of the arm, and it
was an honor for me to help with the advancement of prosthetics
for upper limbs.
Working with the arm, it has been amazing because the limbs
that we have now for upper extremities are not very versatile.
They don't have many degrees of movement. I will get a wrist
turn and maybe a pinch, but with this, I can open my hand. I
can rotate my wrist. I can grab something. And it is amazing to
have something that you can manipulate with your residual limb
and eventually with your brain. It gives you that confidence
and that independence to get back into the work field and
continue to serve your country in whatever manner be so. Thank
you.
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you very much. And thank you again
for your service to your country. It is very much appreciated.
I now recognize Professor Raichle for five minutes to
present his testimony.
TESTIMONY OF DR. MARCUS RAICHLE,
PROFESSOR OF RADIOLOGY, NEUROLOGY,
NEUROBIOLOGY AND BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING,
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
Dr. Raichle. Chairman Bucshon, Ranking Member Lipinski, and
Members of the Committee, thank you so much for inviting me to
participate in this hearing to discuss future prospects for
neuroscience research.
Having been involved in neuroscience research for the past
45 years, and must say that I am--my life has been--I have been
very fortunate to experience an absolute revolution in the way
we think about and look at the human brain. And this of course
came about in the 1970s when x-ray computed tomography, CT, the
CAT scan was introduced. It not only changed the world of
neurology in which I work, but also it promoted thinking along
the lines of other ways in which to obtain images of organs of
the body and particularly the human brain.
The first to appear on the scene was positron emission
tomography or the PET scan which was invented in our laboratory
in the early 1970s and followed thereafter by the development
of magnetic resonance imaging. And both of those techniques
have matured tremendously over the intervening years and are
providing us with spectacular information on the human brain
and health and disease across the lifespan from premature
infants to the end of life, valuable insights that were
unanticipated when I got into this business.
This of course is--involve the efforts of a wide range of
highly skilled technical people in areas of physics and
engineering and chemistry and computer science. But to me one
of the great advances in all of this was creating the interface
of this technology to the study of the human brain. And therein
it called upon and benefited enormously from an understanding
of how to describe human behavior. This is no mean task and it
involved people at the outset beginning to study issues of
language and linguistics and cognitive psychology and it was
instrumental in the development of the field of cognitive
neuroscience, which I think is a marvelous demonstration of
integration of talent across multiple levels that is necessary
if you are going to make any progress in this endeavor.
Much of the imaging that one sees in the now--something on
the order of 17,000 papers in the world literature on fMRI and
another 14,000 involving PET, what one sees is often
traditionally a way of looking at the brain, of asking you to
do something and comparing it to you are not doing it and
seeing what lights up. And so you can see this in scientific
journals in Newsweek and Time magazine and probably on TV on
occasion.
And this dominated the story for quite some period of time
and is still an important part of this, but there came a
realization along the way that these changes that we observe,
that which is occurring in my brain as I talk to you and in
your brain as you listen to me, are small changes in the
background of enormous activity. Your brain on average is about
two percent of your body weight and yet it consumes 20 percent
of the body's energy budget. So if you are just being a neural
economist, you would say we better find out about what this is
all about.
And how this has evolved has been quite remarkable in the
sense that this ongoing activity is noisy, and for a long time
we just threw it away. Scientists like to get rid of noise in
their data. And then there came the realization that this noise
is deeply interesting, and from it, we can determine remarkable
insights in terms of how the brain is organized in carrying on
its activity regardless of whether you are sitting here in this
room sleeping, driving your car, or whatever.
So this has been a paradigm shift in the way we operate and
think about this, this whole idea of intrinsic activity, and
its importance is, I think, immense in terms of understanding
the diseases of the nervous system because if you are going to
do that, you are going to have to understand what the nervous
system is actually doing and what it is devoting its efforts
to.
Now, what--much of what I have said and which I think about
of course is of great interest to neuroscientists writ large,
but, as was posed to me in the questions for this committee,
what about the man in the street, the person that is concerned
about a disability, a history of Alzheimer's and their family?
And it is incredibly prevalent in mine. And what I can say is
that from this work what has emerged is the ability to predict
the onset of disease because what can't be replaced must be
prevented.
So in the case of Alzheimer's, the ability to anticipate
the onset of the disease by many years using imaging materials
which, if I had had more time, I would love to show you, but I
think the issue of using these biomarkers of disease to
anticipate the onset of symptoms by years allows us to think
creatively about preventing the disease before it take its
toll. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Raichle follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you very much.
I now recognize Professor--Dr. Robinson for five minutes to
present his testimony.
TESTIMONY OF DR. GENE ROBINSON,
DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR GENOMIC BIOLOGY,
SWANLUND CHAIR, CENTER FOR ADVANCED STUDY
PROFESSOR IN ENTOMOLOGY AND NEUROSCIENCE,
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
Dr. Robinson. Good morning, Chairman Bucshon, Ranking
Member Lipinski, and Members of the Subcommittee. I would also
like to thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony
today on the frontiers in human brain research and the
importance of an interdisciplinary and interagency approach to
neuroscience.
Today, I will use an example from my laboratory's research
on honeybees to address the importance of basic research on
brain and behavior. It is necessary to understand how healthy
brains work in order to find treatments for the many
devastating brain disorders that afflict our society. This
involves basic research on animal models, the type of science
that is championed by the National Science Foundation. From
this work, we can generate hypotheses for what changes occur in
a dysfunctional system and then test possible interventions for
these disorders.
If I may have the first image, please?
[Slide.]
Honeybees are famous for their highly structured division
of labor. Some bees take care of the baby bees while others
forage outside for nectar and pollen. In addition to this
highly structured organization, there is also a great deal of
flexibility. Bees can switch between jobs according to the
needs of their colony. This raises the question how can a brain
that is the size of a grass seed produce such complex behavior?
What does this say about our brains?
To address this question, we developed a couple of new
research tools. One is a new system of tracking bees with
radiofrequency ID tags developed in my laboratory by retired
businessman and current citizen scientist Paul Tenczar to help
us study behavioral activity.
The second tool is a device to study brain activity that
comes from genomics, which is a new science that studies the
assemblage of all of our genes. We suspected that switching
from one job to another might involve reprogramming the bees'
brains for the new job. This led us to interdisciplinary
research from behavior to genomics with funding from NIH and
USDA to sequence the bee genome. We were surprised to find that
the way this reprogramming occurs is that the genome actually
is very sensitive to the environment and in a very dynamic way.
When a bee responds to events in the hive, thousands of
genes in the brain change their activity and then the behavior
changes. It is as if the genes are blinking on and off like
Christmas lights, changing the amount of the brain's proteins
that they make. It turns out that in addition to bees, other
species, including birds, fish, mice, and humans also have
dynamic genomes in their brain.
Last year, I co-chaired a special meeting of the National
Academy of Sciences and the Canadian Institute for Advanced
Research to explore the human health implications of this
discovery of the dynamic genome. The conference imagined a new
interdisciplinary collaboration among psychologists,
sociologists, political scientists, neuroscientists, and
geneticists to understand how the experiences of childhood
adversity affect the brain and predispose for certain types of
brain disorders. The lesson here is that an insight from basic
animal research is helping to address the critical question in
human health.
It will take the integration of a variety of types of
research on both animals and humans to reach a complete answer,
including research funded by the NSF Directorate for Biological
Sciences and the NSF Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and
Economic Sciences. The BRAIN Initiative similarly needs to
commit to an effective blend of basic and applied research to
provide more opportunity for transformative discoveries.
The bee story also illustrates that some animals are
ideally suited for the pursuit of very specific questions,
sometimes even better than the traditional workhorses of the
laboratory, the fruit fly or the mouse. Neuroscientists
actually have known this for a long time. The humble squid
essentially launched the modern era of neuroscience because its
nerve cells are so big that their activity could be studied
even with the primitive techniques of the 1940s. The research
undertaken as part of the BRAIN Initiative should likewise
benefit from a broad research agenda of model animals and model
behaviors.
Understanding how the brain works represents a formidable
challenge to our collective ingenuity and dedication. With this
challenge comes great opportunity to increase our understanding
of brain and behavior to improve our health and the functioning
of our society. We must remember that basic science research is
called basic not because it is simple but because it provides
the foundation for innovation.
Through the united and creative efforts of biologists,
mathematicians, engineers, physicians, and other explorers of
the brain, big brains or little brains, we must and we will
find the answers that we need. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Robinson follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you very much.
And thank you all for your testimony. It is fascinating. I
am really going to be interested in seeing where the questions
lead us today. It is going to be a fascinating discussion.
I want to remind mebers of the committee that the rules
limit questioning to five minutes. And at this point I will
recognize myself for five minutes.
There was a study, Dr. Raichle, in National Geographic
about caffeine. I don't know if you saw that one about people
waking up in the morning just as a sideline and studying the
brain flow--colored brain flow of people that are decaffeinated
and people that have caffeine, and it is true you do need your
cup of coffee in the morning if you are chronically a caffeine
user. It showed that.
Dr. Raichle. Fortunately, I had mine.
Chairman Bucshon. There you go. It was a fascinating,
fascinating study.
Along the similar line, you mentioned that if we could
image diseases earlier in lives, we may predict what might be
the future. I mean we have diseases like Huntington's chorea,
for example, and we do know genetically what will happen. Has
that disease or any other like that been helpful? And anyone
else that wants to comment can also. Dr. Raichle? I mean is
there--is that what you are talking about?
Dr. Raichle. Not Huntington's in particular. The one that
stands out in my mind, of course, is Alzheimer's because of the
enormous effort to look at the changes early on realizing that
they do occur 15, 20 years before the onset of symptoms.
In a slide that I was hoping to show you but didn't the
project known as the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer's Network,
which is studying these rare genetic variations that guarantee
you will get Alzheimer's disease, they are rare but they
enormously informative, you can predict in an individual when
they are going to get the symptoms. So studying them 15, 20, 25
years beforehand, you can begin to categorize the changes in--
of the pathology like amyloid plaques and the changes in
metabolism, the brain atrophy that precede the onset of
symptoms by many years.
This opens up an opportunity to understand how the disease
evolves but it also opens up the opportunity of slowing it down
or preventing it. And in the case of Alzheimer's, simply
slowing it down has an enormous benefit to family and to the
individual and to the economic cost of that terrible disease.
Chairman Bucshon. Do you have anything to add to that, Dr.
Landis?
Dr. Landis. In Huntington's disease, there are longitudinal
studies that have been tracking people who are known to be
gene-positive, and looking both at imaging parameters and
psychosocial parameters, and we now have the same kind of
understanding that is involved in Alzheimer's. Before the motor
symptoms appear, it is very clear that there is quite a long
prodromal period. And just like for Alzheimer's, were there
neuro-protective therapies that had been identified, you could
in fact treat patients before there is enough destruction of
neurons to actually see motor symptoms. Similar studies are
underway for Parkinson's disease.
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you.
Mr. McLoughlin, your team is composed of engineers, medical
doctors, surgeons, and scientists working closely together.
These are individuals that would not normally work together.
What elements are required for successful interdisciplinary
approach, I mean, in your view?
Mr. McLoughlin. Okay. I think there is basically four
elements that are present here that are all very important.
First of all, we are able to leverage decades-long basic
research in the brain. And so we have research members on our
team that have been supported by NIH and others that have spent
years understanding how to take a set of neural patterns in the
brain and understand what the intent was, how to form the hand.
And that was a obviously very important piece of this.
The second component of this was advances and technology
outside the field of neuroscience. So, for example, in the back
of the Joe's hand here is a small processor which is
essentially the same thing that most of you have in your
smartphones right now. So it allows us to do all the very
complex analysis in that very small package. So it can be self-
contained, portable, lightweight.
The third component then was we--DARPA recognized that
there was a need, so I am old enough to remember Neil Armstrong
walking on the moon and that program was driven by a singular
objective, which is put a man on the moon and return him
safely. And this project has a similar objective that unifies
the team--a very diverse team. So we have basic researchers
through very applied engineers that are all very much focused
on the fact of developing a prosthetic arm that works like our
natural arm. And it is--and I can state that very concisely,
very simply. In everything we do on the program is towards that
objective and it doesn't matter where--you know, if you are
working in a basic laboratory or you are doing CAT-CAM designs
of mechanical devices somewhere.
The fourth very critical element is the environment which
we develop this in. So we very early on made a very conscious
decision that we would maintain an open architecture to the
system so that while we have our research team working on this,
we have other research teams that are currently using pieces of
the technology that have come out of this program, imported it
into their laboratories, and have done that very, very easily.
So we allow researchers to come in, modify the system,
connect their own things to it so it makes a very easy, open
platform so that researchers aren't having to constantly
reinvent things in order to work in this area. So we put all
those things together and provided, you know, the environment,
you know, the basic science, and that singular drive in order
to pull this whole set of players together, which we have had
over 30 different organizations involved in this program.
Chairman Bucshon. Great. That sounds like it has been a
fairly cohesive effort towards a singular goal, and that seems
like maybe your most important message.
I am going to recognize now the Ranking Member, Mr.
Lipinski, for his questioning.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to--before I
begin, I want to ask unanimous consent to enter into the record
the opening statement by Ranking Member Johnson.
Chairman Bucshon. Without objection.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Full Committee
Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson
Thank you Chairman Bucshon. I'm really delighted to be here this
morning. In my hometown of Dallas, the Center for Brain Health at the
University of Texas at Dallas is doing important research on brain
disorders and injuries and contributing to the Administration's BRAIN
Initiative. I have taken a number of people to the Brain Health
facility so we could talk to the researchers and learn more about their
work.
Before I entered public service, I was a psychiatric nurse at the
VA Hospital in Dallas. This was at a time when many of our young men
were returning from Vietnam seemingly whole on the outside, but
suffering from acute and long-term mental health challenges that we
only recently came to understand as post-traumatic stress disorder.
Today, because of the life-saving measures that we have been able to
implement in the field, thousands of young men and women have survived
serious injuries in Afghanistan and Iraq and returned to their
families. But many of them, and many more without any visible scars,
suffer terribly from traumatic brain disorder and PTSD.
The research supported by federal agencies such as NSF, NIH, and
DARPA is essential to increasing our understanding of the human brain.
We need to better understand when things go wrong, such as in PTSD and
drug addiction, so that we may develop more effective treatments. But
it's hard to determine when things have gone wrong if we don't fully
understand the normal functioning of a healthy brain. Because the
National Science Foundation is not limited by examining specific
pathologies or applications, it is particularly well suited to asking
and answering fundamental questions about normal brain function. With
this freedom, NSF can support research such as Dr. Robinson's work on
understanding the social behavior of honey bees. As Dr. Robinson's work
evolved from his basic questions about honey bee behavior, the
applications to human neuroscience became evident and NIH also began to
fund him. This is the way it should work. As we put neuroscience in
context at today's hearing by focusing on applications, we should not
forget the foundation of basic research on which these advances are
built or the agency that is the leader in supporting such basic
research.
Dr. Robinson, I'm sorry for putting you on the spot, but your work
in particular illustrates another important point. Five years ago you
published an NIH funded study on the Effects of Cocaine on Honey Bee
Dance Behavior. If I were to look just at that title in order to judge
the merits of your research, I might dismiss it as unworthy of taxpayer
support. But I have confidence in NSF's and NIH's merit review process,
a process that has become recognized worldwide as the ``gold standard''
for merit review. As a result, I have no doubt this is a serious study
with real implications for understanding human addiction, an important
issue in neuroscience. I also wonder about the significance of this
work to better understanding honey bee colony collapse disorder that
threatens agricultural production worldwide. I hope you will have the
opportunity during Q&A to enlighten us on this fascinating research.
Thank you all for being here this morning and I look forward to
your testimony.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you. I want to thank all of our
witnesses and especially thank Master Sergeant Deslauriers for
his service to our country.
I want to start with Dr. Landis. What are the distinctive
roles of the Federal partners in the BRAIN Initiative? And the
second part is who is managing the program ensuring that the
work is coordinated?
Dr. Landis. That is an excellent question. There are three
Federal partners that are currently involved: NIH, NSF, and
DARPA. There is an interagency working group on neuroscience
that has been set up to look at interests of many more Federal
agencies in brain research, and they have written a report
which is not yet public which has recognized that the BRAIN
Initiative or projects like that are a critical part not just
for those three agencies but for all agencies.
There are commitments that are made for Fiscal Year 2014
from the three agencies. NIH is in the process of planning what
those initiatives will look like. We expect a report early in
September. And on that committee--NIH committee sit ex officio
members from DARPA and from NSF. NIH has been involved in the
NSF planning. And so I anticipate that, based on the missions
of those agencies, we will end up with a very complementary and
integrated program.
DARPA, as you have heard, has mission. We want to fly to
the moon. We want to create a prosthetic arm. NIH has interests
in integrative science, mammalian--not just mammalian but many
models. And NSF has--brings to the table engineering,
mathematics, and other approaches.
So we believe that through collegial interaction and
participation in the planning efforts that this will be a well-
managed project. But it isn't yet launched so we will see as it
goes forward.
Mr. Lipinski. All right. Thank you. I want to move to Dr.
Robinson. In your opening statement you brought up how
important it is to have an integrative approach to research
topics like this, and you point out the considerable resources
that the University of Illinois can bring to bear from
neuroscience to social science to the computing power of the
Blue Waters computer.
So I would like to ask you for your vision of what is
possible over the next ten years of this initiative over these
disparate fields. I know it is a huge question but just to give
us some sense of what types of questions you think we will be
able to answer ten years from now that we can't today.
Dr. Robinson. I can give you one general vision and that
has to do with an approach in science is to really understand a
particular phenomenon. One needs to be able to do two things.
One needs to be able to observe it under natural conditions and
then one needs to be able to manipulate it. So a lot of the
BRAIN Initiative is geared toward developing new tools to be
able to visualize the activity of a real live active brain and
see it in action when it is responding to changes in its
environment, when it is called upon to organize a particular
activity.
And so there is a great deal of excitement about the
development of sensors that are at the nanoscale. We have some
superb engineers at the University of Illinois who are getting
mobilized to work on these now thanks to the BRAIN Initiative,
the sensors that work at the nanoscale that will be possible
then to record the activity of an active brain, and then in
turn to be able to use that same inroad into the brain to be
able to stimulate particular parts of the brain, particular
circuits to get more specific cause-and-effect relations.
And then finally, tying that altogether will be really
high-powered computer models, the kind that Blue Waters will be
able to do to be able to understand the phenomena, decompose it
into single-unit-level understanding, as well as the whole
level.
Mr. Lipinski. I understand that you did a very good job of
putting out there for us what needs to come together in all
this. Is there anything that you would expect? What kind of--
you know, just look out there and say what would you like to
solve? What do you think we can solve? What types of questions
or problems or issues, is there anything that you have in mind?
Dr. Robinson. We spoke today. Several people mentioned how
the brain is organized hierarchically. There is different
levels of organization. You have whole brain and you have brain
regions, you have circuits, and then there are the individual
neurons. We badly need to understand the relationship of those
units to each other, those levels of organization to each
other. How do individual neurons orchestrate their activity to
create a circuit? How do the circuits then form a brain region
that is functional? And then of course the whole brain.
I take inspiration in framing this question from the
beehive, no surprise, where we have similar questions. So you
have a fully functioning colony and we need to understand how
the behavior of individual bees gives rise to the whole colony
and how the brain inside the brain--how the brain inside the
bee gives rise to the colony and the gene inside the brain
inside the bee inside the colony. So it is a Russian dolls
nested-level sort of approach, and that is exactly what any
complex system has. And the challenge is to decompose into the
functional levels and then understand the relationship between
those functional levels.
Mr. Lipinski. All right, thank you.
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you very much.
I now recognize Mr. Hultgren for five minutes.
Mr. Hultgren. Thank you very much. I really appreciate you
all being here. And this is so interesting. Hang on one second.
My phone is--Gina is taking it out. Thank you. I bumped
something and I apologize. Bad timing.
It is--this is so interesting for me and I really
appreciate you all being here and want to see this as a start.
And I want to thank the Chairman and Ranking Member for their
efforts in starting this discussion and really figuring out
where we can take this from here. Brain science and brain
injury and illnesses impact so many people. We may see just the
human toll through Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, but also for young
people. Some of the challenges we are seeing there as well,
even at very young ages with some educational challenges with
brain science and--or brain diseases that we don't fully
understand.
So I just want to thank you so much for being here. Thank
you for your work.
I do want to talk briefly on some issues that I am focusing
on right now. And, Dr. Raichle, I know you mentioned our brains
take up about two percent of our body weight but use about 20
percent of the energy. One of the things--and I am so thankful
for Dr. Robinson and Blue Waters and what they are doing at the
University of Illinois.
What we have seen China now surpassed us in computing power
and I am encouraging--we have got legislation that we have
introduced to push our own abilities into exascale computing
and recognizing how important computers are going to be for us
to be able to continue brain research. And so I wanted to just
get your thoughts on that. It is interesting. The human brain
can do more parallel computations per second than our fastest
supercomputer while riding on the energy required for a dim
light bulb, just amazing.
But there are really incredible challenges that we face as
well. I know that we can reduce the amount of energy needed for
these exascale computing challenges but also some of the
parallelism challenges are going to be there.
So I wondered if--I know the Human Brain Project is one of
European Commission's Future & Emerging Technology flagship
projects. The goal for that is to reconstruct the brain piece-
by-piece using supercomputer-based models and simulations. I
know these models offer the prospect of a new understanding of
the brain and its diseases leading to completely new computing
and robotic technologies.
I wondered, Dr. Landis, and then also Professor Raichle if
you could talk just briefly about the European Commission. They
have announced this ten-year plan with funding levels of, I
think, it is $1.19 billion. What are your thoughts on this
project? Why have they taken this approach? And do you think if
you could get some thoughts, do think this is the correct
approach and is it something we can learn from here as well of
planning towards the future?
Dr. Landis. So the two projects, the BRAIN Initiative and
the European Human Brain Project are actually quite different
in the approaches that they are taking and very complementary.
I just spent the last two days at a planning meeting, an NIH
planning meeting for the BRAIN Initiative. And what became very
clear at that meeting was that in order to come up with
reasonable models of how brains function, you really need to
have data about the system itself and that models in the
absence of the data about how the brain works really are not
going to be terribly useful.
So you can think of our BRAIN Initiative as producing tools
that would allow us to collect those data and that the
Europeans will be going ahead trying to create models perhaps
in the absence of all the data that they need.
Now, China has also--is also embarking on a brain project
that seems to be the next big thing, and of course you have
mentioned the concerns about Chinese investments in computers.
We in the States, I think, in the neuroscience community are
concerned about investments that other countries are making in
neuroscience and other biomedical disciplines and about brain
drain. And it is hard not to have young scientists see
opportunity where funds, investments are going up instead of
down.
Mr. Hultgren. We do this. I am going to run out of time.
And so I do want to follow up with all of you if that is all
right. I have a lot of other questions and things, but I want
to just spend my last minute or so with Master Sergeant.
First of all, thank you so much for your service. I was
just struck as you are talking of your commitment to continue
to serve in new ways, and I just think that is amazing. And I
would just ask you, and Mr. McLoughlin as well, your thoughts.
You talked about quality of life for our women and men who have
been injured in service that, but I wondered also if you could
talk briefly if this could potentially have application as well
in areas of high danger dealing with explosives and things and
what is happening with that and if you see much of a future
there? Certainly, we want to help people who have been injured
but the best thing would be to prevent the injury in the first
place, and if that very dangerous job to be done by something--
a machine like this. I wonder if you could talk briefly about
that.
Sergeant Deslauriers. Yes, sir, absolutely. Well, I am
coming up on 16 years in February so I have been doing this
long time.
Mr. Hultgren. Thank you.
Sergeant Deslauriers. And we kind of grew into it and, you
know, the idea where it came about, you know, since 2000--I
mean since 9/11. So, the quality of life for us since then, I
kind of have a perspective of both sides being an amputee and
then also being an explosive arms disposal craftsman where I
see, you know, I can use this on a daily basis but then I could
also use that on a robot to take that--take it out from a
vehicle, send it down range, and I can take apart and IED just
as easily as I would be doing it with my own hands.
Mr. Hultgren. It is amazing.
Sergeant Deslauriers. I just tried that one out for the
first time today and I was amazed. And it opened my eyes up to
the program aside from the prosthetic side and seeing the other
applications of the MPL. So it is not only going to be for the
quality of life of amputees in the future not only just
military but also civilian and then with the application of
putting it into the field for future use and saving lives.
Mr. Hultgren. Great. Well, again, my time is expired. Thank
you, Chairman. But I just want to again thank you so much.
Master Sergeant, thank you for your work on this and your
continued commitment to see advancement in this and protect
future soldiers as well. So thank you all so much and look
forward to continuing the conversation and taking this forward.
Thank you so much.
I yield back.
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you.
I now recognize Mr. Peters for five minutes.
Mr. Peters. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank
you, Master Sergeant, not just for your service but what you
are going to help teach other people who have been similarly
affected. And thank you for that, too.
Two lines of questions maybe for Dr. Landis. You mentioned
how the BRAIN Initiative can take lessons from the successful
human genome project, which we in San Diego feel a particular
connection to. And you include the importance of widely sharing
data. So I am curious about what policies, including data
management and access, you think are in place or need to be in
place to make sure that the data generated from the BRAIN
Initiative can be shared across disciplines and ultimately into
the private sector?
Dr. Landis. So the issue of data sharing has become
increasingly important as scientists collect larger and larger
data sets. They need to be available and accessible to
appropriate scientists to analyze. We have excellent examples
with the human genome project and also with ADNI, Alzheimer's
Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, which posts on websites for
people to see as soon as the data are collected. The human
Connectome Project is posting data quarterly. We anticipate
that that data sharing and mechanisms to permit it will be an
integral part of the BRAIN Initiative.
And part of the meeting that I just attended was dealing
with what kinds of data do we need to share and what kinds of
repositories do we need and how we have appropriate access? So
it is very much on the minds of the committee.
Mr. Peters. Top of mind in the BRAIN Initiative. That is
the place to be.
Dr. Landis. And you do have a representative on the
planning committee from San Diego----
Mr. Peters. Right. I appreciate it.
Dr. Landis. --not a Representative, a scientist from your
district.
Mr. Peters. And then my second question has to do with the
outputs from this in addition to the research itself, in
particular training opportunities. Anyone--this could be
anyone--training opportunities, an initiative, whether NIH has
a role in training undergraduates and graduate students in
other fields? And then kind of implications for new curricula
or degree programs that we might want to institute for the next
generation of brain scientists? And maybe, Dr. Landis, you
could start and anyone else could respond.
Dr. Landis. So for training, part of the NIH mission is not
only to discover fundamental knowledge and apply that knowledge
but also to train the next generation of biomedical
investigators. And we feel very strongly at NIH that that
training begins at the level of college. And if you want to
have first-rate investigators who are well-trained, you need to
engage their interests in college and then to be able to frame
appropriate training programs in graduate school and
postgraduate. So we are very much committed to that.
In terms of the BRAIN research initiative, the discussion
has been that if one of the most important things that we can
do in the BRAIN Initiative is to analyze data and put together
an understanding of how thousands or millions of neurons are
interacting to create behavior, we really need to engage
scientists in cross-disciplinary training that would take
mathematicians, statisticians, and others, computational people
to work hand-in-hand with investigators who are doing the wet
bench work. So we talked about possible--expanding present
training programs.
And I will cede to someone else.
Mr. Peters. Okay. Anyone else want to comment on that? No?
Well, I would say again, thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the
hearing and thanks to the witnesses for being here. Again, in
San Diego this is one of the cornerstones of our economy is the
relationship between basic science research and in particular
healthcare and brain research. So we are excited about it and
hope to be participants and beneficiaries and wish you the
best.
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you.
I now recognize Mr. Collins for his questions.
Mr. Collins. Thank you, Chairman.
Dr. Landis, Buffalo, New York, is a hotbed for multiple
sclerosis. As we know, MS is a genetically based, European-
based autoimmune disease, and whether it is western New York or
Australia, New Zealand, Europe, that is where we find it. So we
are a hotbed for that and there has been a lot of drug
development for relapsing-remitting, no question about it, but
when it comes to secondary progressive MS, which you mentioned,
which is where I would like to go, that is debilitating and an
awful situation.
You mentioned that the NIH has been working on something
which would be, you said, slowing the progression. I am just
curious. I know of one drug out there that works with a very
tiny subset of secondary progressive patients. I know of
another, a microparticle immune--you know, stimulant that is
looking to stop the progression. And I am just curious. Could
you give me some more information on what you were referring to
as something that was slowing the progression?
Dr. Landis. So I should have specified that I was referring
to relapsing-remitting. We do not have treatments for
progressive multiple sclerosis. And I would be pleased to get
back to you with an answer for the record that would summarize
the research in this area that NIH is conducting and what are
the most promising avenues. We recognize that this has been an
underexplored area. It is complicated. Not a lot of patients,
but for the patients who have it, it is truly devastating. So I
will get back to you with an answer.
Mr. Collins. Well, I think it is fairly well understood
that almost every relapsing-remitting patient----
Dr. Landis. Becomes eventually--
Mr. Collins. --someday they will unfortunately move into
secondary progressive at which point that is not a good day for
them or their families. I do think the Fast Forward Fund, which
I am sure you are familiar with, has worked on several. I do
know there is one drug, MIS416, which is a microparticle immune
stimulant that is in Phase IIB trials that has promise----
Dr. Landis. Right.
Mr. Collins. --on secondary progressive MS, but everywhere
in western New York, especially, you know, as people look out
20 years and that is the typical relapsing-remitting time frame
that it is not--so I am glad to hear you are working on it and
I would very much like to know because I----
Dr. Landis. And if you would like to come and visit the
intramural program, we have several investigators working on MS
and would be pleased to have you come and meet with them and
see the labs and some of the kind of approaches we are taking.
Mr. Collins. I definitely would like to take you up on
that. It is an important part of what is going on in western
New York and thank you very much.
Dr. Landis. Yes.
Mr. Collins. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you.
I now recognize Mr. Schweikert for five minutes.
Mr. Schweikert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Have you ever
shown up at something and it turns out to be just fascinating?
And, Master Sergeant, thanks for spending time with us. I
know sometimes sitting down, you know, in this sort of formal
body can be a little nerve-racking and it is truly appreciated.
And let's start, Dr. Landis, and this may be one for
everyone. First off, on diseases of the brain, let's focus on
Alzheimer's, whether it be plaque or neurons that die and there
are firing issues, where are we in the genetic modeling? And
some of this is going to tie back to some things Dr. Robinson
was saying. Where do you believe we are on understanding the
map?
Dr. Landis. So we have identified a number of genes which
are dominantly inherited and cause Alzheimer's. Dr. Raichle
discussed one of them; there are several others. We have other
genes which have been shown to increase risk. The most
prominent of these is ApoE4. If you have two alleles ApoE4, you
have a significantly greater risk of getting Alzheimer's. But
there are still significant investments that can be made in
this area, and one of the major projects from last year's
special Alzheimer's money was to take $25 million of the $50
million and invest it in a better understanding of risk factors
for Alzheimer's.
Mr. Schweikert. Okay. In that line, Dr. Robinson, was I
listening to you properly, that some of your research or the
externality of your research is the ability of observing the
turning on and off of certain genetic mapping? Am I listening
properly?
Dr. Robinson. Yes, that is correct. So there are tools now
to be able to look at the activity of genes. Now, these tools
are best deployed in animal models and they need increased
sophistication to be able to be used in humans, but the initial
insights can be gained from the animal models.
Mr. Schweikert. And are you--do you tie sort of your
research into the mapping data now? Or are you still moving
mostly, you know, moving from bees now to the next level of
animal models?
Dr. Robinson. So we are collaborating in a broad network to
be able to generalize the results from animals to the study of
adversity, the program that I mentioned where we are looking at
how--basically how the social environment, how do experiences
``get under the skin'' to affect biology, predispose for
certain diseases.
Mr. Schweikert. Okay. I am going to do one bump and then
back--Dr. McLoughlin, where are we technologically right now on
nerve actually communicating with an interface? And where is it
going right now and how much world and outside and private, you
know, research are you seeing on innovation? I mean what is
moving right there?
Mr. McLoughlin. Okay. So the state-of-the-art right now is
that we have--so we currently have two patients that have been
implanted with arrays. In these are arrays that have 100
electrodes so, you know, we talk about trillions of neurons, so
we are seeing very, very small populations of neurons. And so
we can--with current technology we can put up a couple hundred
electrodes in the brain right now, fairly close to the surface.
And with those signals, we are able to do very high-level
control of the arms, so reach out, grasp objects, do the, you
know, types of things that we normally do.
Mr. Schweikert. And where I was going--and forgive me, I
don't remember the reference, but earlier this year, I thought
there was some excitement because of some nano sensors that
were being tested? And you may have to help me out on this one.
And that actually was the direction that that technology was
supposed to go.
Mr. McLoughlin. Yes, so I think that--so that is where we
are today. And the challenges that we have are--today is that
those electrodes tend to degrade over time, so after a couple
of years, the response goes down. So the exciting thing in some
of these nanotechnology arrays, use of growth factors so that
the nerves will actually--rather than pulling away from the
electrodes, it will actually grow into the electrodes so that
we will--I see within, you know, the next five years or so that
we see next-generation array systems coming out that instead of
working for a couple of years will have the potential to work
10, 20, or 30 years in the human brain.
Mr. Schweikert. Okay. And I am going to--well----
Dr. Landis. If I could just add electrode manufacture is
one of the initiatives that has come up repeatedly in the
planning sessions for the BRAIN Initiative that we need better
ways to record from more neurons over a longer period of time
with more fidelity. And I--we don't know what is going to be
recommended but----
Mr. Schweikert. And are you finding research both in this
country and around the world, both private and public in that
area?
Dr. Landis. I am--there is interest in this but it is
pretty clear that this is a very tough area. You are talking
material science, you are talking about connections, you are
talking about radio communication of these rather than wires.
And I think significant Federal investment in this area would
make a huge difference in encouraging both investigators and
the academic and private sector to engage.
Mr. Schweikert. I am over my time. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you very much.
Before I conclude today's hearing, I would like to thank
and recognize Melia Jones. Where is she? She is back there.
Raise your hand. I thank her for her work on this Subcommittee
for the past two years and wish her all the best with her
future endeavors. The committee hates to lose her but our loss,
I guess, is Texas A&M's gain. And again, thank you very much
for your service to the committee.
I would like to thank the witnesses for their valuable and
very fascinating testimony and the Members for their questions.
The record will remain open for two weeks so some Members may
submit some questions for a written response and additional
comments. And I think we could go on for a long time on this
subject. It is very fascinating.
So the witnesses are excused and the hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:16 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
Appendix I
----------
Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Responses by Dr. Story Landis
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses by Dr. Marcus Raichle
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses by Dr. Gene Robinson
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Appendix II
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Additional Material for the Record
Submitted statement by Chairman Lamar S. Smith
Thank you Chairman Bucshon for holding this hearing.
The brain is a fascinating subject, and one of the unknown
frontiers of medical science. We all have a brain, but we barely
understand how it works.
But through the process of science, we have begun to understand
what questions to ask, what tools we need and the complexities that
underlie the trillions of connections between neurons.
Developments in basic scientific research, such as those
contributed by Prof. Marcus Raichle, have provided deep insight into
how the brain is organized.
As the witnesses will discuss today, brain science is inter-
disciplinary in nature. Advances from applied mathematics, physics,
chemistry, computer science and engineering help provide both a
conceptual understanding and experimental tools.
In my view, this is where the National Science Foundation (NSF) can
play an important role towards understanding the basic science behind
Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, autism, stroke, dementia, traumatic brain
injury, epilepsy and many other debilitating neurological disorders.
I believe the NSF should support inter-disciplinary research in
this area because the results of this research will have clear and
direct benefits to the American people.
The results of this research could be the foundation of new
technologies that help wounded warriors walk again and also improve the
quality of life for many injured Americans.
For example, near my district in San Antonio, the Department of
Orthopedics & Rehabilitation at Brooke Army Medical Center provides
state of the art orthopedic and rehabilitative care to active duty
soldiers of all services. I have met many of these wounded veterans who
deserve a better life.
My district is also home to several brain rehabilitation centers,
including the Texas NeuroRehab Center and Reeves Rehabilitation Center.
These centers treat thousands of patients who look forward to leading
independent and productive lives.
Research the NSF funds in robotics, statistics, fast algorithms and
computation can be used by medical doctors to help patients perform day
to day tasks.
This past April, the Administration announced the Brain Research
through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative, otherwise
known as the BRAIN initiative. While I do not think many would disagree
with the goals of this initiative, I am concerned that this is solely a
repackaging of existing initiatives.
Any federal initiative should include stated hypotheses along with
clear steps towards implementation.
I hope this hearing serves as an opportunity to work together and
look for a bipartisan solution to funding inter-disciplinary brain-
related research.Thank you Mr. Chairman for holding this hearing, and I
look forward to the witnesses' testimony and questions. And I yield
back.