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TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2013 D1

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SCIENCE MEDICINE TECHNOLOGY HEALTH

In a special issue next week, Dennis Overbye willtell the story of the search for the elusive particle.

Finding the HiggsCMS COLLABORATION/DAPD

By JOHN MARKOFF

In setting the nation on a course to mapthe active human brain, President Obamamay have picked a challenge even moredaunting than ending the war in Afghani-stan or finding common ground with hisRepublican opponents.

In more than a century of scientific in-quiry into the interwoven cells known asneurons that make up the brain, research-ers acknowledge they are only beginningto scratch the surface of a scientific chal-lenge that is certain to prove vastly morecomplicated than sequencing the humangenome.

The Obama administration is hoping toannounce as soon as next month its in-tention to assemble the pieces — and, evenmore challenging, the financing — for a

decade-long research project that willhave the goal of building a comprehensivemap of the brain’s activity.

At present, scientists are a long wayfrom doing so. Before they can even beginthe process, they have to develop the toolsto examine the brain. And before they de-velop tools that will work on humans, theymust succeed in doing so in a number ofsimpler species — assuming that whatthey learn can even be applied to humans.

Besides the technological and scientificchallenges, there are a host of issues in-volving storing the information research-ers gather, and ethical concerns aboutwhat can be done with the data. Also high-ly uncertain is whether the science will ad-vance quickly enough to meet the timeframes being considered for what is beingcalled the Brain Activity Map project.

Many neuroscientists are skeptical thata multiyear, multibillion dollar effort to un-lock the brain’s mysteries will succeed.“Ibelieve the scientific paradigm underlyingthis mapping project is, at best, out of dateand at worst, simply wrong,” said DonaldG. Stein, a neurologist at the Emory Uni-versity School of Medicine in Atlanta. “Thesearch for a road map of stable, neuralpathways that can represent brain func-tions is futile.”

The state of the art in animal research isto sample from roughly a thousand neu-

NEWS ANALYSIS

Connecting the Neural DotsA goal is set, butscientists are far from amap of the human brain.

CONTINUED ON PAGE D6

WASHINGTON — The day after a frigid, star-salted night spent tromping through theAlexandria woods with David Johnson ofthe Global Owl Project, and listening to thestridently mournful cries of wild barredowls that remained hidden from view, Istopped by the National Zoo around sunsetto take visual measure of the birds I hadheard.

The two barred, or Strix varia, owlswere just rousing themselves in the out-door enclosure, and they looked biggerand more shaggily majestic than I ex-pected, with capes of densely layeredcream-and-coffee plumage draped on their17-inch frames and pompous, Elizabethanfeather ruffs encircling their necks. Likeany good royalty, they ignored me.

That is, until I pulled out my phone withthe birdcall app and started playing thebarred owl song. The female’s languideyes shot wide open. The male’s head spunaround in its socket by 180 of the 270 de-grees an owl’s head can swivel.

With the distinctive forward-facing gazethat can make owls seem as much humanas bird, the barred pair stared at me. Iplayed the call again, the male grew bored,

and I was about to put the phone awaywhen suddenly the female — the larger ofthe two owls, as female birds of prey oftenare — pitched her body forward on herperch, lifted up her heavy, magnificentwings and belted out a full-throated retortto my recorded call.

After a brief pause, she hooted the eight-note sequence once more, at which pointan astonished zoo-goer nearby burst intoapplause.

In the Western imagination, the owlsurely vies with the penguin for the posi-tion of My Favorite Bird. “Everyone lovesowls,” said David J. Bohaska, a paleobiol-ogist at the Smithsonian’s National Mu-seum of Natural History, who discoveredone of the earliest owl fossils. “Even mam-malogists love owls.”

Owls are a staple of children’s books andcultural kitsch — here wooing pussycats inpea-green boats and delivering mail to theHarry Potter crew, there raising a dubi-ously Wise eyebrow in the service of snackfood. Yet for all this apparent familiarity,only lately have scientists begun to un-derstand the birds in any detail, and topuzzle out the subtleties of behavior, biol-ogy and sensory prowess that set themapart from all other avian tribes.

Researchers have discovered, for exam-ple, that young barn owls can be im-pressively generous toward one another,regularly donating portions of their food tosmaller, hungrier siblings — a display ofaltruism that is thought to be rare amongnonhuman animals, and one that many asmall human sibling might envy.

The scientists also discovered that barnowls express their needs and desires toeach other through a complex, rule-basedseries of calls, trills, barks and hoots, a lan-guage the researchers are now seeking todecipher.

BASICS NATALIE ANGIER

The Owl Comes Into Its Own

S. AVDEYUK/AMUR-USSURI CENTRE FOR AVIAN BIODIVERSITY

Jonathan Slaght with a female Blakiston’s fish owl near Amgu, in Russia, in 2008. The largest owl species, it is especially ferocious and nests outdoors in subzero temperatures. CONTINUED ON PAGE D6

Beloved, majestic, ferocious(perhaps even wise), a birdsheds some of its mystery.

Puzzling out subtleties of behavior, biology andsensory prowess.

3 ORIGINALS

A first look at DNA, in a letterto a child. NICHOLAS WADE3 BOOKS

Botox, obesity and body im-age. ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D.

4 THE CONSUMER

Doubts about robotic hyster-ectomies. RONI CARYN RABIN5 PERSONAL HEALTH

Rethinking drugs for preg-nant women. JANE E. BRODY

ONLINE

Video and audio of owls, andFrancis Crick’s DNA letter.nytimes.com/science

Mediterranean diet answers.nytimes.com/well

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