2019 was an exciting year for neuroscience discovery! Last month, several high-profile scientific magazines, journals, and mainstream news outlets featured articles looking back at the top scientific achievements of 2019.

This year’s PECASE (Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers) recipients include researchers and scientific administrators who are contributing to the BRAIN Initiative.

The BRAIN Initiative Neuroethics Working Group have developed a series of Neuroethics Guiding Principles to help frame and navigate the neuroethical questions that BRAIN-funded research may raise.

In the run up to the New Year, numerous magazines, journals, and news outlets looked back over the scientific achievements of 2018 and looked ahead to what we can expect from science and technology in 2019.

The BRAIN Initiative has grown over the past 5 years. It will continue to build upon the public-private partnerships, revolutionary technology development, and new knowledge that have emerged, so that we can continue to map the future of brain health.

Five years since its inception, the U.S. BRAIN Initiative has given scientists new tools to watch the brain as it learns, to map its myriad connections, and to repair circuitry gone awry.

A group of scientists and funders reflect on what the BRAIN Initiative has already achieved and how it is evolving

Developing wiring diagrams ranging in scale from the individual synapse to the whole brain is a high priority for the BRAIN Initiative — a research effort to catalyze and speed advances in neuroscience by deploying cutting-edge computer science, physics, biology, and chemistry to develop transformative new tools.

BRAIN researchers advance the brain-machine interface: a neuroprosthetic device composed of micro-electrodes implanted in the brain, and the computer algorithm that translates those “thoughts” into movement.