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Harvard Med School psychobiologist Dr. Bertha Madras tells MDGBoston audience that NIH's proposed $4.5 billion 'BRAIN Initiative' must include "significant funding for study of the adolescent brain"
[June 26, 2014]

Harvard Med School psychobiologist Dr. Bertha Madras tells MDGBoston audience that NIH's proposed $4.5 billion 'BRAIN Initiative' must include "significant funding for study of the adolescent brain"


BOSTON --(Business Wire)--

Harvard Medical School professor and psychobiologist Bertha K. Madras, Ph.D., is strongly recommending that a "significant" portion of the NIH's proposed $4.5 billion 'BRAIN Initiative' be used to fund research into understanding the adolescent brain.

Dr. Madras made these remarks during her recent presentation at a symposium sponsored by MDGBoston: "The Year of the Brain: Advances in Imaging, Diagnostics and Therapeutic Delivery."

"Many brain diseases begin in adolescence during final brain development," said Dr. Madras. "One of the most preventable brain diseases is substance addiction. With early, pre-14-year-old use of such drugs as nicotine, alcohol and marijuana, there is a much higher propensity to become addicted as an adult. I think tis is a critical piece of what our federal government's investment in neuroscience should go toward: understanding adolescent brain development - because once derailed, very often the derailment of potential, the derailment of an adolescent, may or may not be reversible."



Click here to view Dr. Madras' full presentation.

A federal report calls for $4.5 billion in funding for brain research over the next 12 years. The long-term scientific vision of the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative was presented on June 5, 2014, to National Institutes of Health Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., by his Advisory Committee to the Director. Dr. Collins called the report "bold and game-changing."


MDGBoston (www.mdgboston.org) is New England's premier organization for individual professionals in the medical device and related fields.


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