The Seattle Times: Paul Allen creates new brain project with $100 million

The Seattle Times: Paul Allen creates new brain project with $100 million "Billionaire Paul Allen, in his largest upfront charitable commitment ever, today will announce that he is giving $100 million to start a nonprofit research center that will try to create a definitive map of the mouse brain that researchers can use for further discoveries.
The Microsoft co-founder is creating the Allen Institute for Brain Science, in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood.
The money will be used to try to build the "Allen Brain Atlas" to show how a list of 30,000 genes can be transformed into a circuit board with a trillion cells.
By mapping cells from the mouse brain and making it publicly available to researchers around the world with "minimum encumbrance," the Allen Institute says it will become a springboard others can use to advance knowledge. Allen says he hopes the center will kick-start more efficient research into how brains develop, learn, form emotions or become damaged by disorders such as Alzheimer's, depression or stroke."

For more on the mysterious Paul Allen, skim The Accidental Zillionaire: Demystifying Paul Allen