BRAIN Initiative: Team-Research BRAIN Circuit Programs - TeamBCP (U19 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
Funding Agency:
- National Institutes of Health
This RFA is one of a family of “Integrated Approaches” NIH BRAIN FOAs that range from small or exploratory, targeted brain circuits projects with specific research outcomes (R34, R01) to large, team-research projects with exploratory aims (U01) or with extensive and elaborated goals and a 5-plus year horizon of discovery (U19, this FOA). There is also a special RFA for doing investigative neuroscience in invasive research opportunities in humans (U01). In each case, the FOAs are guided by BRAIN 2025 A Scientific Vision: “The Application of Integrated Technologies to Study Fundamental Questions in Neuroscience: Numerous long‐standing problems in brain science will benefit dramatically from the integrated experimental approach made possible by the BRAIN Initiative.” Potential applicants are encouraged to visit the NIH BRAIN Initiative website for information and guidance https://www.braininitiative.nih.gov/funding/initiatives.htm.
FOAs in this family of initiatives emphasize the use of cutting-edge methods of activation and recording to understand the behavior of circuits at cellular and sub-second levels of spatial and temporal resolution using human or non-human animal subjects. This family of initiatives also seek advances in theory and/or analytics and have a requirement of a data standards and management plan, as well as a data dissemination plan to facilitate use of the results by the research community.
The proposed studies must relate to at least one of the seven major topic areas of the BRAIN 2025 report:
1. Discovering diversity: Identify and provide experimental access to the different cell types to determine their roles in the context of circuit function.
2. Maps at multiple scales: Generate structural and functional circuit diagrams that can span resolution from synapses to the whole brain.
3. The brain in action: Produce a dynamic picture of the functioning brain by developing and applying improved methods for large‐scale monitoring of neural activity.
4. Demonstrating causality: Link brain activity to behavior with precise interventional tools that change neural circuit dynamics.
5. Identifying fundamental principles: Produce conceptual foundations about circuit dynamics and functional connectivity for understanding the biological basis of mental processes through development of new theoretical and data analysis tools.
6. Advancing human neuroscience: Develop innovative technologies to understand brain circuits and ensembles of circuits that inform understanding of the human brain and mechanisms for treating its disorders.
7. From BRAIN Initiative to the brain: Integrate new technological and conceptual approaches produced in Goals #1‐6 to discover how dynamic patterns of neural activity are transformed into cognition, emotion, perception, and action in health and disease.
Application budgets are not limited but need to reflect the actual needs of the proposed project.
September 16, 2022
James Gnadt, PhD, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), Telephone: 301-496-9964, Email: BRAINResOppHu@ninds.nih.gov