Paul Allen at the Allen Institute For Brain Science


The point to all this Star Trek style technology could not be more profound. That tiny tangle of tissue in the mouse's skull turns nerve impulses from the rodent's eyes into an interaction. Decoding that process would give scientists the first true window into how a mammalian brain experiences the world.

It has a secondary benefit, too. Looking over the contraption puts a big--and pretty rare--smile on the face of Paul Allen, the 59-year-old Microsoft cofounder who has plowed $500 million into the Allen Institute for Brain Science, a medical Manhattan Project that he hopes will dwarf his contribution as one of the founding fathers of software. The institute, scattered through three buildings in Seattle's hip Fremont neighborhood, is primarily focused on creating tools, such as the mouse laser, which is technically a new type of microscope, that will allow scientists to understand how the soft, fleshy matter inside the human skull can give rise to the wondrous, mysterious creative power of the human mind.

"As an ex-programmer I'm still just curious about how the brain functions, how that flow of information really happens," says Allen in a rare interview, in a conference room overlooking an active ship canal. "The thing you realize when you get into studying neuroscience, even a little bit, is that everything is connected to everything else. So it's as if the brain is trying to use everything at its disposal--what it is seeing, what it is hearing, what is the temperature, past experience. It's using all of this to try to compute what the animal should do next, whether that animal is a mouse or human being."

It's heavy stuff, fueled by curiosity and scientific ambition made yet weightier by issues of mortality and the neuro-fragility Allen's own brain has been coping with. In June his mother, Faye Allen, a schoolteacher who inculcated him with a love of books and knowledge, died of Alzheimer's. "Any time you've seen a loved one...," Allen says, trailing off. "You see their personality, everything that makes them human, slowly slipping away, and there is nothing you can do about it." And Allen himself has waged a fight against stage four non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a deadly blood cancer that is now in remission. He is flush and energetic, juggling our interview with phone calls about one of his sports teams, and filled with urgency about his legacy.



The willingness to fund these projects has gained Allen a growing number of disciples. "Paul has become a hero to me," says David Anderson, a professor at Caltech who first proposed the mouse map project to Allen. "He's done something for science in a way that very few other philanthropists have. It required that he have faith in science and go where his curiosity guides him."

But there are also doubts about whether his new, grander plans will amount to anything. "The first phase of their investment really worked out," says Susumu Tonegawa, an MIT professor and winner of a 1987 Nobel Prize who has done extensive brain research. But can Allen's industrial approach really solve the mystery of how the brain creates consciousness? "It's one of the biggest unresolved issues in brain research," he says. "Whether it will work or not, I don't know."

