Promoting global collaboration for brain health research
Authors: Liping Liu, Valery Feigin, Ralph L Sacco, Walter J Koroshetz
Journal: BMJ (2020)

Liping Liu and colleagues discuss the challenges of global collaboration for brain health research and promising future opportunities for improvement of brain health worldwide B rain science is still in a discovery phase because of our limited knowledge of basic nervous system structure and function.We need a broader perspective of delivering meaningful outcomes to patients with neurological disorders and greater understanding of the mechanisms that underlie development of neural circuitry, how neurons encode and retrieve information, and how information interacts from one neuron to another.Knowledge of how brain activity gives rise to complex behaviours and how it adapts to external and internal changes is limited.Superficial understanding of the various senses, emotions, and cognitive functions-thinking, choice, and even consciousness-promise innovative solutions in areas such as health, education, and 21st century economics. 1With the increasing burden of major brain diseases across the world, we need to find the most effective means to comprehensively apply modern biotechnology and to solve problems in clinical medicine.Neuroscience is entering a new era of collaboration, in which successful new technologies, generated by large scientific projects across the world, will have a dramatic impact not only on medical science but on economics and society as well.In 2013, the US government launched the Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative and put forward a national brain science project.This initiative complemented the Human Brain Project in the European Union and was shortly joined by the Brain/MINDS programme in Japan and several other national initiatives from Korea, China, Canada, Australia, and the International Brain Research Organization.Coordinating these successful international programmes and encouraging broad distribution of new technologies and open accessibility of the data generated will increase their value, while promoting creativity and expertise from every source.Multidisciplinary science that leverages translational research is critical to the success of these endeavours, along with the establishment of distribution systems and sharing mechanisms of technology on human data.In support of these goals the International Brain Initiative was formed to coordinate global BRAIN projects. 2.This may facilitate comparability of the data and reduce economic and social disease burden.The complexity of the human brain is reflected in how its molecules, cells, circuits, and systems enable humans to perceive, recognise, and communicate with each other, as well as to understand how our brain confers our individual identity and enables us to contemplate our place in the natural world. 3The ambitious goal of understanding the brain is being approached in various projects.Paramount to this process of tackling all the objectives is the commitment to collaboration between government and non-government organisations and integration of basic and clinical translational brain research. 4• Further priorities and strategies to promote global collaboration on key brain health and initiatives are warranted to increase the opportunities