Bio-Injectable that Promotes Neuron, Blood Vessels Growth in Damaged Brains
--Must See--

Bioinformatics Summer Internship 2024 With Hands-On-Training + Project / Dissertation - 30 Days, 3 Months & 6 Months Duration

China Brain Project: New Brain Science Facility to be Set up at Beijing

The past few years have witnessed a global awareness of the importance of brain research, as exemplified by large brain projects initiated in Europe, the U.S., and Japan. And in this regard, Beijing has announced plans to build a brain-science research centre that will rival in size some of the world’s largest neuroscience organizations.

It will likewise fill in as the core facility for the country’s long-awaited brain project — China’s version of the high-profile brain-science initiatives under way elsewhere in the world.

The new facility will be one of the primary solid advancements in the national China brain-research project, which has been under discussion for a long time, however, it is yet to be formally announced.

On 22 March, an agreement was signed establishing the Chinese Institute for Brain Science, Beijing, naming two neuroscientists — Peking University’s Rao Yi and Luo Minmin of the National Institute of Biological Sciences in Beijing — as co-directors.

Luo says that he will oversee the approximately 50 principal investigators who will have laboratories at the new centre, with Rao assuming responsibility of external grants that will bolster around 100 investigators throughout China

.

The new brain institute will not be part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Rather, it will collaborate with the academy, along with Beijing’s other leading biomedical institutions, including Tsinghua University, Peking University and the Academy of Military Medical Sciences.

The Chinese undertaking is expected to complement ongoing projects worldwide with its rapidly growing cadre of top neuroscientists, abundant supplies of research monkeys, the country’s heavy burden of people with neurological diseases and its big investments in brain-imaging facilities. “The brain is such a complex system that significant efforts are needed to tame this complexity at an international level,” says Katrin Amunts, scientific research director of Europe’s Human Brain Project. China has the potential to provide important insights that relate to the work of other projects, she says.

This year, Luo intends to utilize 180 million Chinese yuan (US$29 million) provided by the Beijing municipal government to enlist the initial first five or six research groups, and to install them in a building already constructed by the municipality, which is across the road from his institute.

While operating at its full capacity of 50 researchers, which Luo plans to have within five years, some 400 million Chinese yuan per year will be required, which Luo hopes to secure from the country’s brain-science project, with a substantial amount still coming from Beijing.

In the meantime, other facilities are preparing their bids for support from the national brain project. A large science park under construction in Shanghai will house a ‘southern centre’ for neuroscience research. Another programme expected to be indispensable to the country’s brain-science initiative is an international mesoscopic connectome project, being designed by Mu-Ming Poo, director of the Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai. Connectome projects attempt to map out all the neural connections in the brain.

What is certain is that China’s political and scientific leadership has come to realize that the country’s pursuit of innovation could be in jeopardy without breakthroughs in basic research.

In search of the perfect burger. Serial eater. In her spare time, practises her "Vader Voice". Passionate about dance. Real Weird.