From KCRW in Santa Monica and PRI, Public Radio International, this is To the Point.

Can science fiction be made real again?

Hello again, I'm Mormon Olney, and this is To the Point from Public Radio International.

A daily look at the issues Americans care about most.

John F. Kennedy's race to the moon led to a multi-billion dollar industry. Mapping the human genome

returned $140 for every $1 invested. Now President Obama wants to jumpstart a map of the human

brain to find how each of 100 billion neurons relates to all of the others.

It's a task so complex new tools would be needed, with consequences nobody can predict.

Would it mean understanding Alzheimer's or Parkinson's?

Would it be the key to human consciousness and the alarming ability to control how people think?

We'll check out the prospects.

On the Porter's notebook later on,

more than a month of rising prices for gasoline, how come? First the news.

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Program Fund. Hello again, Warren Alney, back with

To the Point. President Obama wants to do for the human brain what the human genome project did

for genetics. But even scientists backing the idea can see that mapping the brain is orders of

magnitude more complex. How should it be funded? Is it possible? Would it give scientists' powers

nobody wants them to have? On reporter's notebook, why are gasoline prices going up this winter,

...