Allen Institute

More than two decades ago, Jeff Carroll learned he carries the gene for Huntington's disease, the same disease that took his mother. Instead of stepping back, he stepped toward it, asking the doctor who delivered the news for a job.

Today, Jeff is part of our new Brain Health Accelerator: a global effort to accelerate brain disease research and expedite genetic therapies for diseases like Huntington's, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, ALS, and Lewy Body Disease.

Huntington's, with its single, well-defined genetic cause, may light the path for tackling far more complex brain diseases. And for Jeff, the science is personal.

We're proud to have him on the team. Read his story, beautifully told by Carolyn Johnson in The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2026/06/02/this-scientist-learned-he-has-devastating-brain-disease-he-set-out-cure-it

One in three people worldwide are affected by neurological conditions. It’s time to take a different approach to brain disease research.

Together with partners like the Bezos family, Amazon Web Services, EverythingALS, and a global network of collaborators, we are launching the Brain Health accelerator, a global research collaboration designed to accelerate our understanding of the human brain and fast-track new precision cell- and circuit-based genetic therapies for neurodegenerative diseases and other disorders.

Every thought, movement, and memory emerges from patterns of electrical activity surging through billions of neurons. To decode this complex language, researchers must pinpoint and manipulate the behavior of thousands of individual neurons to see the role they play in the brain. Getting this data is delicate and difficult.

A global team of engineers and scientists overcame this challenge by combines optical stimulation with a highly sensitive recording probe into one tool: Neuropixels Opto. Shared today in Nature Methods, this breakthrough tool allows research to measure, record, and manipulate brain cells.