At our annual BSI Retreat, Invited Seminar Series, lunchtime journal clubs, or Summer School we hope to encourage the same. We are striving to establish user-friendly core facilities for radioisotopes, animal care, and advanced technologies that can be profitably shared among laboratories. It is important that BSI researchers, rather than committees or the Brain Science Planning Office, find the time to nurture and guide our growing scientific community. Only during the first three years of life does a profusion of connections lend the developing brain exceptional flexibility and resilience. Whether a child's mind is wired for great scientific prowess or a lifetime of idleness depends on the patterns etched by repeated experience in those critical early years.
Many adults still manage to learn new languages, but usually only after great struggle.
We must remove any walls that confine us to individual laboratories in favor of common areas for discussion. Post-docs should be encouraged to interact freely with each other, while BSI is transformed into a more attractive place for foreigners to live and work in Japan. In a few short years, our developmental critical period will pass. As we take our first tentative steps, we look to the global research community to stimulate us. The uniquely Japanese vision of long-term research investment has fallen upon Neuroscience, offering an opportunity unprecedented anywhere in the world.