And because it could cost billions of dollars over several decades to build a comprehensive brain map, long-term funding could be another challenge.

WSJ: Obama Gives Details of Brain-Research Project

The Human Brain Project will attempt to build a computer-based copy of a human brain to understand neurological disorders and the effects of drugs.

BBC: Europe gives 2bn euros to science

Doubling its staff of scientists and technicians to more than 350 people, the Seattle-based nonprofit group plans to build over the coming decade a series of "brain observatories, " computational tools to map neural behavior.

WSJ: Paul Allen Gives $300 Million to Brain Research

He explained that he pursued his work more to learn how the human brain works than to learn about how to build a more sophisticated machine.

FORBES: Radical Ideas

"I'm trying to build a movement around thinking about how the brain works, " says Hawkins, the main researcher of the two.

FORBES: Building A Better Brain

As eardrum vibrations naturally create a usable voltage from brain signals, the prototype can build enough charge in a capacitor to drive a very low-power wireless transmitter that relays the electrochemical properties of the ear and potentially diagnoses balance or hearing problems.

ENGADGET: MIT ear-powered wireless sensor sustains its charge through sound

The researchers expected to see a build-up of lactic acid and an acidic environment in the brain, as seen in other organs suffering from oxygen deprivation.

BBC: NEWS | Health | Smoking diseases alter the brain

In the late 1980s circumstantial evidence that condemned the role of Alzheimer's amyloid plaques began to build when Bruce Yankner, a Harvard biologist, showed in test tubes that the amyloid protein poisoned brain cells.

FORBES: Magazine Article