Although many view Apple as a leading pioneer of mainstream computing innovation, it would still be rather difficult to imagine a world as technologically advanced as ours without the efforts of its long-standing rival Microsoft. Now one of the co-founders of the Redmond, Washington software giant, Paul Allen, has announced plans to commit $300 million to blaze a new trail in another vital area of research: understanding how the brain works.
The donation is actually an additional commitment to the endeavor from Allen, raising his stake in exploring the brain to $500 million. The funds are being targeted for the Allen Institute for Brain Science, an organization engaged in a 10-year plan to answer a number of questions about the human brain. As for what those questions are, they include figuring out how our brains process, store and encode information, as well as discovering what the actual building blocks of brain function are and how they are affected by disease.
Commenting on the new focus on brain research, Allen said, "Our brains are many magnitudes more advanced in the way they work than any computer software that has ever been invented. Think about this, we can teach students to program computers in a couple of years in school, but even with a lifetime of learning at present we are far away from fully understanding the brain."
If all this sounds a bit too much like murky, high-level science, the Allen Institute for Brain Science has produced a short video (see below) that offers a succinct and powerful visual illustration of how the organization plans go about uncovering the mysteries of our minds. For those interested in getting a more detailed grasp of the group's efforts, you can visit the project site or watch the group's recent 45-minute presentation.