BRAIN Initiative: Brain-Behavior Quantification and Synchronization – Transformative and Integrative Models of Behavior at the Organismal Level (U01 Clinical Trials Not Allowed)
Funding Agency:
- National Institutes of Health
The two BRAIN Initiative 2.0 reports ("The BRAIN Initiative 2.0: From Cells to Circuits, Toward Cures" and "The BRAIN Initiative and Neuroethics: Enabling and Enhancing Neuroscience Advances for Society") highlight that a critical step forward is to study “the brain in action,” including efforts to develop “tools to analyze naturalistic (untrained) and trained behaviors” and “to assimilate and link brain recordings with behavior” (p. 34 of "The BRAIN Initiative 2.0: From Cells to Circuits, Toward Cures"). Matching the scientific rigor and precision of measurements of brain activity with equally precise, temporally dense measurements of the functional output of the brain, as expressed in a broad range of behaviors, will accelerate the discovery of brain-behavior relationships in both health and disease. Achieving a comprehensive understanding across these levels of analysis demands the same level of rigor, precision of measurement, and temporal resolution across all levels.
At present, tools for measuring behavior in humans and other species lack the necessary precision and resolution to fully capture behavioral dynamics synchronously with data from the environment with which the organism is interacting and which shapes the behavior under study. To address this gap, the BRAIN Initiative BBQS funding opportunities support 1) development of tools for simultaneous, multimodal measurement of behavior within complex, dynamic physical and/or social environments and align these data with simultaneously recorded neural activity; and 2) development of novel conceptual and computational models that capture dynamic behavior-environment relationships across multiple timescales and that can integrate correlated neural activity into the model. Information on BRAIN BBQS Funding Opportunities can be found at the BRAIN Initiative Notices of Funding Opportunities webpage (select “BBQS” in the Filter column) or by contacting BBQS at BRAINBBQS@od.nih.gov.
BBQS Transformative and Integrative Models of Behavior at the Organismal Level
Behavior, i.e., how organisms, including humans, interact with their environments, is a critical determinant of health and a mediator of morbidity for nearly all diseases. To fully understand behavior as a determinant of health and disease, it is necessary not only to elucidate the biological mechanisms underlying behavior but also to understand how behavior and its underlying mechanisms are shaped by their adaptive significance to the development of the individual and to the evolution of the relevant population/species. Moreover, an understanding of how brain-body-behavior relationships are conserved or divergent across species is critical for the rigorous use of non-human species to model aspects of human neurobehavioral function in health and disease.
The goal of this NIH BRAIN Initiative BBQS funding opportunity is to support the design of research that will advance behavioral science through: 1) Integration of theoretical frameworks guiding the study of behavior, its underlying mechanisms, and adaptive value; 2) Acceleration of the development and/or adoption of technologies and methods for objective, high-resolution measurement of behavior at the level of the organism and its/their environment; 3) Development of sharable standards and archives for behavioral data; and 4) Development of new computational models that capture the behavior-environment interface as a complex dynamic system.
RESEARCH OBJECTIVES AND SCOPE
The goal of this funding opportunity is to support research with the following major objectives:
- To engage an interdisciplinary and functionally diverse team including scientists from diverse fields across the behavioral and social sciences, engineers, and others with diverse experiences and perspectives that will work to develop innovative, transdisciplinary approaches for measuring and modeling the behavior of organisms interacting with their complex, dynamic social and physical environments.
- To develop or adapt sensing technology and methods that can, as non-intrusively as possible, synchronously measure multiple variables that capture behavior as a multidimensional, integrative, organismal process and simultaneously capture data from the dynamic social and/or physical environment of the organism. Methods for monitoring behavior and physiology of the organism are expected to not constrain the behavior of animal, i.e. allow the range of movement the organism would naturally express.
- To develop a predictive or testable statistical/computational model (including machine learning (ML)/artificial intelligence (AI) methods) designed to integrate multidimensional behavioral and environmental data; built with the capacity to integrate simultaneously collected neural data.
Applicants must address the above three major objectives. Applications that do not explicitly address these major objectives will be withdrawn.
Plan for Enhancing Diverse Perspectives
- This NOFO requires a Plan for Enhancing Diverse Perspectives (PEDP) as described in NOT-MH-21-310, submitted as Other Project Information as an attachment (see Section IV).
- Applicants are strongly encouraged to read the NOFO instructions carefully and view the available PEDP guidance material. 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.
Research topics and activities of interest under this RFA include the following:
- Development, novel application and advancement of methodologies or technologies including:
- Hardware and/or software tools that advance novel methods to simultaneously capture and quantify multiple observable dimensions of behavior including, but not limited to, whole-body ambulation; limb, head, facial and/or eye movements; changes in respiration; speech or other vocalizations, gestures, or other modalities of communication; peripheral physiology and glandular secretions; and blood markers obtained with minimally-invasive methods.
- Hardware and/or software tools for synchronous collection of dynamic environmental data (including stimuli or signals presented to and/or detectable by the subject) with behavioral data.
- Analytic tools and statistical and/or computational approaches (e.g., ML/AI methods) with the capacity to integrate multidimensional behavioral and environmental data and to capture processes occurring across a wide range of timescales (e.g., milliseconds to days) within and across data types.
- Use of existing data and/or synthetic data to validate or assess feasibility of sensor methodology and/or computational models based on the integration of multidimensional behavioral and environmental data
- Approaches that integrate multidimensional behavioral and/or environmental data with synchronous measures of neural activity.
- Development and testing of new theoretical frameworks and models informed by multiple disciplines within the behavioral, neural, and social sciences, including but not limited to:
- New approaches for modeling the organism's physiology, behavior and environment as a complex dynamic system.
- Studies examining how cognitive function (e.g. decision-making) may change as a function of the complexity of, or constraints on, the behavior of the subject, using methods that capture multiple dimensions of an integrated organismal behavioral response.
- Research examining evolutionary or neurodevelopmental processes influencing relationships between cognitive function and behavior at the organismal level.
- Studies designed to use real-time, multimodal behavioral and environmental sensing, and computational modeling, to test potentially competing or orthogonal theories about behavioral or cognitive processes.
- Research examining neurocognitive and behavioral diversity across individuals or within an organism as a function of the complexity of the physical or social environment.
- Studies that examine how relationships between cognitive function and the complexity and kinetics of behavior at the organismal level change across neurodevelopment.
Application budgets are not limited but need to reflect the actual needs of the proposed project.
October 09, 2024
Holly Moore, PhD
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
Phone: 301-827-7376
Email: holly.moore@nih.gov
Elizabeth Powell, Ph.D.
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)
Telephone: 301-443-0786
Email: elizabeth.powell3@nih.gov
Erin Burke Quinlan, Ph.D.
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH)
Phone: (301) 451-0636
Email: erin.quinlan@nih.gov
Martha C Flanders
NEI - NATIONAL EYE INSTITUTE
Phone: 301-827-5191
E-mail: martha.flanders@nih.gov