An $8-million grant has been awarded to the University of California, Irvine, to create a brain cell database.

The database will allow scientists to study brain activity in patients suffering from motor neuron disorders like Lou Gehrig’s disease.

The school says researchers will then build a detailed collection of these diseases’ “signatures” that will be used to identify cell targets for new drug treatments.

The database will be one of six in the U-S, with others at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center; the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease; University of California, San Francisco; Johns Hopkins University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

(The Associated Press)