How the human brain dynamically performs its innumerable functions is recognized as one of this century’s “Grand Challenges”. Indeed, seemingly straightforward fundamental information such as which genes are expressed therein and what functions they perform are only partially characterized. To overcome these obstacles, we established the CommonMind Consortium (CMC; www.synapse.org/CMC), a public-private partnership to generate functional genomic data in brain samples obtained from autopsies of cases with and without severe psychiatric disorders. The CMC is the largest existing collection of collaborating brain banks and includes over 1,150 samples. A wide spectrum of data is being generated on these samples, including regional gene expression, epigenomics (cell-type specific histone modifications and open chromatin), whole genome sequencing, and somatic mosaicism.
