Global Neuroscience

As the cover image of this issue depicts, this issue of Neuron contains a collection of essays and opinions on the future of global neuroscience. Over the last 5 years, owing in large part to significant technological innovation across the field, we’ve seen an explosion of growth in neuroscience. And these new neuroscience technologies and scientific advances are capturing the imagination not just of the scientific community but also the public at large. Countries around the world are investing in neuroscience and neurotechnologies through initiatives like the U.S. BRAIN Initiative, the Human Brain Project in Europe, and brain-focused infrastructure projects in Japan, China, and Korea, not tomention themany other countries around theworld who are planting their own flags in these new neuro-territories. Earlier this fall, in September, representatives of these international brain projects and associated public and private partners met in New York City at a meeting co-sponsored by Rockefeller University, Columbia University, the U.S. National Science Foundation, and The Kavli Foundation to discuss opportunities for coordination and collaboration of these international initiatives. The fact that this meeting occurred during the UN General Assembly meeting, with a global chorus of voices all inspired by the brain, nicely symbolizes the current world-wide excitement around neuroscience, bothwithin the scientific community and for the broader public. Indeed, as much as the recent scientific breakthroughs have energized the field, it’s fair to say that the deeper excitementmay bemore about the broader potential that can be seen just over the horizon, the potential for both transforming neuroscience and for neuroscience transforming thewider world. And from that perspective, it’s worth pointing out that in September 2015, exactly a year before this brain projects coordinating meeting, the United Nations adopted a set of goals for sustainable development (http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/) to improve the lives of people everywhere, including goals around health, education, economic development, innovation, and broader societal issues like social justice and empowerment, all spheres where neuroscientists and the advances coming from the global neuroscience community can contribute. Inspired by these developments and watching these initiatives take root over the past few years, we felt that the time was right to take stock. In choosing topics for the issue, we aimed these essays to be informational about some of the initiatives that have emerged worldwide, but as importantly, we wanted to spotlight a broader range of issues and topics that are globally important for the future of the field—ideas for how neuroscientists can work better together; proposals for leveraging the big data and technology revolution; new models for training and dissemination; approaches for public engagement; and discussions around the ethical and societal implications of these neuroscience advances. Coordinated funding efforts like these brain projects are ultimately about more than funding or even specific scientific goals. Initiatives like these are about inspiring new ideas, newways of thinking, and new approaches, and you can’t always knowwhere inspiration will come from or where it will lead. An asset of the neuroscience field has always been its diversity, and in fact, neuroscience isn’t one field but a federation of disciplines. There’s no doubt that in a distributed network like ours, it can be more difficult to find alignment, to agree on common goals and rally behind a singular shared vision. But the flip side of this is that this diversity offers rich soil for the seeds of innovation and new ideas to grow. As these large-scale initiatives develop and as new projects come forward, it’s going to be important to keep our eyes on the larger strategic aspirations, proceeding forward rigorously and with determination to meet those goals, but it will also be critical that we keep our peripheral view open for opportunities that have yet to emerge or that we haven’t even thought about yet. What are the gaps that we aren’t paying attention to? What are we not doing that we should be doing? We need to be flexible and open to new ideas—from both expected and unexpected sources—and be prepared to pivot and adapt strategies when needed. With this issue,wehope todoour part to catalyze this global conversation about the opportunities andchallenges for our field.We’re not necessarily endorsing or advocating for any of these ideas or proposals, and it won’t be the case that all readers will agreewith the ideas and visions represented in this issue. That is exactly what we hoped would come out of this issue—vigorous discussion and debate and engagement from a broader range of stakeholders. Of course, we are fully aware that this collection of perspectives still only represents a narrow slice of the field and thatmore of you have something to say thanwe had roomor time to capture in this issue. Inspired by these goals and motivated by a desire to see more bottom-up feedback around these challenges and ideas, we are opening the opportunity for proposals from the field for NeuroViews on the future of global neuroscience. We want to hear your visions for where neuroscience should be heading. The guidelines for submitting a proposal are simple: if you are interested in writing a NeuroView or contributing your opinion to a Voices piece, we invite you to submit a brief (500 words or less) proposal summarizing who you are, what you propose to write about, and why you think it’s an important topic for the field to engage with. We are open to proposals on any topic that touches on strategic opportunities and challenges for global neuroscience. Co-authors are welcome and encouraged. Whether you’re a student, postdoc or PI, working in academia, industry, or another neuroscience relevant sphere, from the U.S. or Asia or anywhere in between, this is your field and your future andwewant to hear from you. TheNeuron editorial teamwill review these proposals and select proposals to move forward as commissions for future NeuroViews and Voices. Selections of commissions and evaluation of the final NeuroView submissions for publication will be made based on the topic, the value and novelty of the ideas presented, and the quality of the writing and presentation. The number of submissions and space in the journal will also factor into how many we are able to publish. Proposals or questions can be sent to [email protected]. If you have an idea for a topic, but don’t want to write yourself, you can also send us an email with your suggestion.