BRAIN Initiative: Targeted BRAIN Circuits Planning Projects – TargetedBCPP (R34 Clinical Trials Not Allowed)
Funding Agency:
- National Institutes of Health
The primary goal of this NOFO is to solicit adventurous, exploratory efforts that will enable future projects with an overall goal of understanding how circuit activity gives rise to a specific behavior or neural system dynamics. Specifically, these R34 Planning projects are at the exploratory/planning stage and expected to enable a future Targeted BRAIN Circuits Projects R01 (RFA-NS-23-024). Thus, the limited scope of aims and approach of these applications are expected to establish feasibility, validity, or other technically qualifying results that, if successful, would support, enable, and/or lay the groundwork for a potential, subsequent Targeted BRAIN Circuits Projects R01. These R34 awards will support an individual laboratory or a small multi-PD/PI group.
This NOFO welcomes applications for projects involving a wide range of species, from vertebrate to invertebrate animals. A broad range of species or experimental systems and a cross-species/comparative approach are welcome and should be chosen based on their power to address the specific question at hand and to reveal generalizable and fundamental principles.
Applications are required to include a Plan for Enhancing Diverse Perspectives (PEDP) submitted as Other Project Information as an attachment (see Section IV). The PEDP will be assessed as part of the scientific and technical peer review evaluation, as well as considered among programmatic matters with respect to funding decisions. Applicants are strongly encouraged to read the NOFO instructions carefully and view the available PEDP guidance material.
Representative, but not exhaustive, examples of topics that could be considered responsive to this RFA:
- Address technical and/or conceptual challenges or barriers impeding an otherwise Targeted BRAIN Circuits Projects R01 (RFA-NS-23-024)
- Adopt or prove viability of a new and unproven technology or tool necessary to enable a new approach or experimental design
- Generalize circuit-based approaches across multiple species
- Generalize resolution, scale, or capability of experimental methods
- Establish new interdisciplinary collaborations that would bridge fields (e.g. link theory, data analysis, and/or computational approaches to novel experimental design)
- Develop experimental capabilities and/or theoretical frameworks
- Merge approaches with the cellular, genetic and technological methodologies developed by the NIH BRAIN Initiative
- Enable bridging of scales integrating rich information on cell-types, circuit functionality and/or connectivity, in conjunction with sophisticated analyses of an ethologically relevant behavior of an organism or a well-defined neural system
The combined budget for direct costs for the two-year project period may not exceed $450,000. No more than $225,000 may be requested in any single year.
:June 30, 2023; October 04, 2023
Karen K David, PhD, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)
Email: BRAINCircuits@NIH.GOV