Europe has one, the United States has one. Now Japan has thrown its hat into the neuroscience ring with the launch of its own brain-mapping project. Unlike its Western counterparts, Japan's effort will be based on a rare resource - a large population of marmosets that its scientists have developed over the past decade - and on new genetic techniques that might be used to modify these highly social animals. The goal of the ten-year Brain/MINDS (Brain Mapping by Integrated Neurotechnologies for Disease Studies) project is to map the primate brain to accelerate understanding of human disorders such as Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia. On 11 September, the Japanese science ministry announced the names of the group leaders - and how the project would be organized.
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