Project Summary: Held an Emerging Technologies/Emerging Threat Conference on Advances in Neuroscience entitled "Future of Neuroscience" on March 12-15, 2002 at the Royal Institute, Great Britain. The Conference on the Future of Neuroscience involved international speakers, each a leading scholar in a key research field of neuroscience. The speakers each assessed advances anticipated over the next ten to twenty-five years in this rapidly progressing discipline. In addition to the speakers, a subgroup of participants incorporated discussions specifically addressed potential near- and long-term CT, justice, and law enforcement applications. The goal of the conference was to provide our government R&D leaders with an aggressive forward-looking evaluation of technological opportunities, risks and threats emergent from neuroscience research and development. In addition, we anticipate that the inevitable cross-fertilization of ideas at the conference will result both in specific research proposals addressing immediate and long-term emergency responder and criminal justice needs, and in new partnerships between federal and international agencies engaged in counterterrorism response and neuroscience researchers. Such collaborative partnerships historically have been difficult to establish between the fundamental science researchers of academia and the applied practitioners of government organizations.

Project Leads:

Lewis Duncan
Michael Gazzaniga