Nowadays is a unique time in the history of humankind because the accumulation of fundamental scientific knowledge is going faster and faster. The knowledge is doubled every 6 years. However, only 10% of this is utilized by people. From this perspective, the important scientific problem now is the study of human brain and preservation of its functions over time. The latter is especially relevant in anesthesia where the physician manipulates his patient’s brain functions every day. In 1953 this idea was proposed by Dr. V. Negovsky, the founder of Russian reanimatology. He believed that the study of brain functions in critically ill patients and the restoration of such functions after the intensive care period is the main function of an anesthesiologist.
In 1990 the international project «The Decade of the Brain» was started. It contributed significantly to the understanding of emotions and consciousness, mapping and studying brain networks. Another project “The Human Genome” which revolutionized medicine, was successfully completed in 2003. The scientific achievements from both projects made the ground for personalized medicine.
It is believed that future research in neuroscience will mainly go in a few directions. One of them would be the development of a genetic atlas of brain architecture, which will reveal the set of activated genes for each period of human ontogenesis and the mechanisms of this process. The scientific team from USC and UC Davis captured on video the process of synapsis formation and traced the development of intercellular connections between neural cells. It gave a ground for a new research project “Connectome”. The project is supposed to create a 4-D map of all neurons and all 100 trillion of their connections in the brain. The understanding of brain chains and networks will improve the diagnostics of brain diseases. The mapping of brain activity will create a “functional connectome”, which could shed light on human behavior and mental disorders. The other breakthrough achievement was brain pacemaker for patients with Alzheimer disease. The scientists from USC and Wake Forest University found a way to upload the memories from the brain to the digital source. “ENIGMA” is an international consortium in genetic neuroscience, which aims to study predisposition to brain diseases. The project has been ongoing since 2009 and for now, it is the largest neuroimaging research team in the world. By 2015 the data from more than 55,000 people have been analyzed. The main focus is on the most complicated disorders like Alzheimer disease. It was shown for this particular disease that 5-years delay in the onset of the disease (from 76 to 81 years of age) will result in 50% decrease in the number of affected people worldwide.
The development of new therapeutic approaches in neuroscience will certainly rely on brain genetic structure, functional connections, and features of brain evolution. By developing the information technologies we are getting closer to the breakthrough in neuroscience in the near future
