BRAIN Initiative: Targeted BRAIN Circuits Projects- TargetedBCP (R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
Funding Agency:
- National Institutes of Health
Companion Funding Opportunity: RFA-NS-22-027 , R34 Planning Grant
The primary goal of this FOA is to solicit research projects that seek to understand how circuit activity gives rise to mental experience and behavior using innovative, methodologically-integrated approaches. Applicants should seek to demonstrate how new and advanced experimental capabilities, integrated methodology, and multidisciplinary expertise can be used to transform the general understanding of neural information processing within the context of specific systems or circuits. This FOA instructs applicants and reviewers that projects more adventurous and innovative than traditional NIH applications are encouraged. Experimental goals should focus on questions of fundamental neurobiology that informs how the normal nervous system works, and can include natural and experimental perturbations that provide mechanistic tests about circuit functions. Projects must include a quantifiable behavior, or behavior of a well-defined neural system. Approaches must offer to identify, record, and/or manipulate identified circuits involved in the behavior with sufficient coverage to capture circuit level dynamics and mechanisms beyond individual cells or synapses. Model-driven experimental design and/or computational approaches should be used to frame mechanistic questions about circuit functions. Results must include a predictive model (quantitative or conceptual) that offer testable experimental results and/or theoretical concepts. Multi-scale approaches, from biophysics to social contexts, are encouraged to enable an understanding of mechanisms at the mesoscale circuit level. Diverse 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.
Targeted BRAIN Circuit Project R01 awards will support an individual laboratory or a small multi-PD/PI team. Projects should reflect the NIH BRAIN Initiative interests of the application of cutting-edge methodologies to understand central nervous system circuit function and dynamics at cellular and sub-second levels of resolution in ethologically relevant behaviors of an organism or a well-defined neural system. Applications should offer specific, feasible, and potentially transformative research goals as endpoints within a 5-year term. See Section IV for the full list of FOA requirements.
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 FOA instructions carefully and view the available PEDP guidance material.
Application budgets are not limited but need to reflect the actual needs of the proposed project.
July 01, 2022; October 06, 2022
Karen K David, PhD; National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS); Telephone: 301-496-9964; Email: BRAINCircuits@NIH.GOV