Recently, more than a dozen of our Institutes and Centers (ICs) came together to tell a story of interconnected, cross-discipline science at one of the largest medical meetings in the world, the 31,000-attendee-strong Society for Neuroscience (SfN) Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.
Here’s an example of how basic science can lead to clinical applications: Dr. Julius Axelrod’s discoveries about neurotransmitters and the metabolism of the nervous system lead to the development of a pain reliever, a new class of antidepressants, and a Nobel Prize.
The NIH Research Festival this year was themed “The Era of the Brain,” so Dr. Francis Collins, NIH Director, began the plenary session by highlighting the BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies). The President’s initiative has been the talk of the town recently and, thanks to some hard work by the leaders at the NIH, has now been transformed into a 12-year scientific vision.