Forum on Neuroscience and Nervous System Disorders

National Academy Of Sciences, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

The human nervous system is remarkably complex, and nervous system disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and depression pose a substantial public health and economic challenge, affecting approximately half of Americans at some point in life. Understanding how the nervous system develops, functions, and ages—in both health and disease—is critical for developing safe and effective treatments. Many federal agencies are involved in this endeavor—including the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Department of Veterans Affairs, Food and Drug Administration, and Department of Defense—as well as academic researchers, private sector companies, disease-focused organizations, and philanthropic foundations. To tackle fundamental questions about the brain, it is also becoming increasingly important to extend beyond traditional neuroscience and integrate expertise across a broad range of fields, including social and behavioral sciences, mathematics, statistics, materials science, physics, computer science, and engineering. Recognizing the need for crosscutting efforts, in 2006 the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine established the Forum on Neuroscience and Nervous System Disorders to convene the wide range of leaders and stakeholders in this domain. Through its meetings, workshops, and other activities, the Forum tackles emerging issues and key challenges related to scientific needs and opportunities, priority setting, and policies related to fundamental neuroscience research; the development, regulation, and use of treatments; and related ethical, legal, and social implications. With this award, NSF continues to join other participating federal agencies and organizations in supporting this neutral venue for exchanging information, differing perspectives, and opportunities for collective action. The Neuroscience Forum brings together leaders from government, industry, academia, disease advocacy organizations, and other interested stakeholders. Neuroscience Forum members meets two or three times per year and the Forum also sponsors two or three public workshops per year, publishes workshop proceedings, and commissions papers as additional mechanisms for engaging its membership, other experts and stakeholders, and the public. To ensure that the Neuroscience Forum serves as a venue for on-going and timely discussions, topics are selected by the members to address emerging needs and advances in the field. In recent years, the Neuroscience Forum has addressed topics such as disseminating tools and technologies that are being developed through the BRAIN Initiative, legal implications of emerging neurotechnologies, scientific opportunities afforded by new transgenic nonhuman primate models. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.