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Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who died on Monday, made his fortune with software that exploits the brain of the computer.
But Allen's passion was the human brain.
"The human brain is now operating in a mysterious and wonderful way, totally different from that calculated by the computer," he told NPR in an interview in 2003. things like appetite or emotion, how do they work in the brain? "
The opportunity for this interview was Allen's $ 100 million donation to launch the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. The initial goal of the institute was to create a detailed online atlas of gene expression in the mouse brain, a work done by the scientists of the institute in just three years.
But this is just the beginning of Allen's scientific ambitions. It would then give hundreds of millions of dollars more to the Allen Institute, which now has nearly 500 employees and has become a driving force in the world of brain research.
In 2011, the institute developed an online atlas allowing scientists around the world to identify activated or deactivated genes in any area of the human brain. The institute then undertook the arduous task of identifying all types of brain cells – scientists believe there are thousands of them.
In 2013, when President Barack Obama announced his BRAIN initiative, the Allen Institute had become a leading player in brain research. The White House acknowledged this by inviting Institute President Allan Jones to the ceremony.
And throughout the ascent of the institute, Paul Allen was an active presence, not just a distant backer.
For example, Allen played an important role in encouraging neuroscientist Christof Koch, who held a permanent position at Caltech, to become the Institute's scientific leader in 2011.
And Allen made it clear that he wanted scientists at the institute to take risks and have an impact, said Koch, who is now the chief scientist and president of the institute.
"He challenged us: think big, what could we do to move the needle that we could not do with universities," says Koch.
The institute has therefore tried to avoid the university model, in which relatively small laboratories work independently under the direction of an experienced scientist and rarely share the results. Instead, says the Allen Institute, "hundreds of people work closely together and agree to common standards and put all the data in circulation" for everyone to use.
And Koch follows Allen's instructions to think big.
One of Koch's ambitious goals is to understand how the brain creates consciousness, a subject that has fascinated Allen.
This effort, like the one that produced the atlas of the human brain, begins with studies on mice. And already, he has produced results.
In 2016, a team from the Allen Institute including Koch was able to monitor the activity of about 18,000 neurons in mice while they were observing. Touching evil, a film of Orson Welles. The data from this experiment is available online for other scientists to study.
This type of research is an important part of Paul Allen's legacy. And his commitment to understanding the brain has created a kind of unusual loyalty among many scientists.
Koch, for example, has a tattoo of the cerebral cortex of a mouse on his left bicep. It was his way of showing Allen and his colleagues at the institute that he shared their determination to understand the brain.
"I thought you should show your commitment to your body," says Koch. "So that's what I did."
Allen reaffirmed his loyalty to his institute in 2012, pledging an additional $ 300 million for new projects.
"We only started to understand the complex problems inherent in understanding the inner workings of the brain," he said at the announcement ceremony. "Our dream is that your day discovers the essence of what makes us human."
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