As part of President Obama's BRAIN Initiative challenge program, the National Institutes of Health has announced its first wave of brain research awards, totaling $46 million in fiscal year 2014 funding.

The national medical research agency, administered under the umbrella of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, chose to support more than 100 researchers in 15 states and several countries, all focused on developing new tools and technologies to understand neural circuit function and create a dynamic view of the activity inside the human brain.

Following the orverarching goals of the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, to revolutionize humankind's overall understanding of the brain, the funded research projects are intended eventually establish new treatments and cures for devastating brain disorders and diseases estimated by the World Health Organization to affect more than one billion people across the planet.

"The human brain is the most complicated biological structure in the known universe. We've only just scratched the surface in understanding how it works -- or, unfortunately, doesn't quite work when disorders and disease occur," said Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the NIH, in a news release. "There's a big gap between what we want to do in brain research and the technologies available to make exploration possible. These initial awards are part of a 12-year scientific plan focused on developing the tools and technologies needed to make the next leap in understanding the brain. This is just the beginning of an ambitious journey and we're excited about the possibilities."

Among the 58 projects included in the agency's awards announcement this week were efforts to Create a wearable scanner to capture the motion of the human brain, use lasers to guide the firing of nerve cells, record the entire nervous system in action, stimulate specific neural circuits with radio waves and identify complex circuits with DNA barcodes.

"How do the billions of cells in our brain control our thoughts, feelings, and movements? That's ultimately what the BRAIN Initiative is about," said Dr. Thomas R. Insel, director of the NIH's National Institute of Mental Health. "Understanding this will greatly help us meet the rising challenges that brain disorders pose for the future health of the nation."

The president last year launched the BRAIN Initiative as a large-scale effort to equip researchers with fundamental insights necessary for treating a wide variety of brain disorders like Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, autism, epilepsy, and traumatic brain injury.

Four federal agencies, including the National Science Foundation, the Food and Drug Administration and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, as well as the NIH, answered the program's challenge component by committing more than $110 million to the Initiative for fiscal year 2014.

Planning for the NIH's component of the initiative is guided by the long-term scientific plan, "BRAIN 2025: A Scientific Vision," which sets outs seven high-priority research areas.

said Dr. Story Landis, director of the NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke: "We are at a critical juncture for brain research, and these audacious projects are from some of the brightest researchers in neuroscience collaborating with physicists and engineers."