White House Announces Brain Mapping Initiative

Whew! Long drought! I was caught a bit off guard by the response to Jane Brody's column about Inside Rehab, which generated a lot of inquiries and new patients for Alltyr! All good things, plus opening the new office in downtown St. Paul and many other activities have left me a bit overwhelmed. Today's blog is written by Ian McLoone, a graduate student at the University of Minnesota Master of Professional Studies in Integrated Behavioral Health. Ian has been working with me learning about clinical work, as well as helping with Alltyr Clinic and other activities. He's going to be a regular contributor to Substance Matters.

MW

White House Announces Brain Mapping Initiative

President Obama announced on Tuesday plans to invest more than $100 million to develop and fund technology to map the human brain. The project, titled “Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies”, or BRAIN Initiative, aims to improve our understanding of the human brain and, according to the White House, “uncover new ways to treat, prevent, and cure brain disorders like Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, autism, epilepsy, and traumatic brain injury.”

Being hailed as the next Human Genome Project, the ambitious initiative will direct $50 million to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), $40 million to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and another $20 million to the National Science Foundation (NSF). In addition, several private sector foundations and institutes have pledged significant contributions, each with specific goals in mind.

Cori Bargmann of Rockefeller University and William Newsome of Stanford University will lead the NIH working group. They will be tasked with creating specific plans, goals, a time frame, and cost estimates for the project moving forward. Of course this begs the question: what goals or plans would blog readers like to see addressed in this process? Is this initiative too ambitious, or not ambitious enough, given its size and scope? Leave your comments after the jump.

NIDA/NIAAA Merger Called Off!

This morning, Francis Collins, MD, PhD, the Director of the National Institutes of Health announced that he had decided to reverse his earlier decision to proceed with the merger of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). This is a cause for celebration, as the merger was a solution in search of a problem right from the start.

For most of us at NIAAA (this process started when I was still there) it always looked like a simple power grab by NIDA and a relatively small but influential group of researchers and policymakers closely affiliated with it. The White House Office of Drug Control Policy (ONDCP; the Drug Czar), former NIDA Director Alan Leschner (who coveted NIAAA when he was at NIDA,) and current NIDA Director Nora Volkow all pushed very hard to make this happen. The "problem" it was supposed to solve were "missed opportunities" to pursue research involving both alcohol and drug disorders, but that's actually never been a problem in reality. The two institutes collaborate on multiple initiatives, and both alcohol and other drug disorders are frequently studied together, if only because they often occur together. But few of us involved with this ever thought there was a problem with the two institutes.

At any rate, without getting into details right now, I think this is very good news indeed.

MW

The (unbridgeable?) gap between academia/NIH and the real world

One major lesson I have learned is that the gap between academia/NIH and the real world of practice in large private health care organizations is so vast that it's almost hard to believe. Even though I have always had a significant clinical involvement, I was shocked at how little I understood about how the real world works. It's taken more than two years to figure out how it works, and very humbling. (Example: Hospitalist: Hi, haven't met you before, nice to meet you. I need some help with this patient with opioid addiction and pain. Me: Hi Dr. Jones, happy to help. Hospitalist: Have you been in this area for a long time? Me: I worked at the VA and the University for many years, then was at NIH for 5 years, then recently moved back here. Hospitalist: NIH? That's very nice. Now, can you help me get this patient out of the hospital?)

MW

NIH Funding Success Rate at Historic Low

As expected, recent figures release by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) show a dismal 17.4% success rate for scientists applying for research funding. NIH is the largest funder of biomedical research in the world, and has two institutes devoted to addiction: The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA.) It's only through NIH supported research that progress is made on understanding addiction and improving treatment outcomes. Yes, we need more access to treatment but we also need better treatments, and that can only come through scientific research. Anyone who care about addiction and its treatment needs to contact their representatives and let them know we support and need research on addiction. Advocacy matters! Why do you think research funding for breast cancer, HIV/AIDS, and autism has gone up so much! Advocacy! Please support research and urge others to as well. MW NIH Grants Funding Drops; The success rate of the government agency’s grant applications has hit an all-time low. By Jef Akst TheScientist.com Oct. 17, 2011 Grant proposals submitted to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are less likely to be funded than ever before, according to a sneak peak at this year’s success rates obtained by ScienceInsider last week. According to the new estimate put out by the NIH’s Office of Extramural Research (OER), the fiscal year that ended on September 30 saw the funding of just 17.4 percent of research grant applications—a historic low, according to a comment from NIH Director Francis Collins. The numbers are still “preliminary,” and may rebound slightly in the final release of the data next month, OER chief Sally Rockey told ScienceInsider. Still, it’s a significant drop from the 32 percent of grants the agency was funding around the turn of the millennium, and the first time in NIH history that the success rate has dipped below 20 percent. And the drop in grant funding could get even worse: just last month, the Senate approved a 1 percent drop in the NIH budget. If finalized, it would mark only the second time since 1970 that the agency’s budget has gone down instead of up.