The Obama administration proposed a decade-long, multi-billion dollar study to map brain activity Wednesday, inviting praise from advocates and criticism that the study is too costly.

The study seeks to do for the brain what the Human Genome Project did for genetics, according to The New York Times.

The project, which is being called the Brain Activity Map, would be a collaboration between federal agencies, privates foundations and teams of neuroscientists and nanoscientists aimed to grain a greater understanding of perception, actions and consciousness, the Times reported.

Advocates of the project hope it could shed light on and provide help in understanding disease prevention, mental illness and perhaps even forward advances in artificial intelligence, The Daily Mail reported.

The details of the study are not final, but the study is expected to be mentioned in President Barack Obama's budget proposal next month, the Daily Mail stated. It is not clear how much federal money would be proposed or approved for the study.

"Every dollar we invested to map the human genome returned $140 to our economy - every dollar," Obama said in his State of the Union address. "Today our scientists are mapping the human brain to unlock the answers to Alzheimer's.They're developing drugs to regenerate damaged organs, devising new materials to make batteries 10 times more powerful. Now is not the time to gut these job-creating investments in science and innovation."

Scientists involved in the planning of the study hope to gain federal financing upwards of $300 million a year, which if approved by Congress would be at least $3 billion over 10 years, the Times reported.

But some scientists are critical of the proposal. Leslie Vosshall, a neurobiologist at Rockefeller University, tweeted: 'Baffled by the NIH Brain Activity Map Project. We don't understand the fly brain yet. How will this come to anything?" the Daily Mail reported.

Michael Eisen, a biologist at Berkeley, who The Atlantic reported has been outspoken on "big science" projects said on his blog,"I think it is now clear that big biology is not a boon for individual discovery-driven science. Ironically, and tragically, it is emerging as the greatest threat to its continued existence."

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