Project Abstract
The application of electric stimulation (ES) to the brain has been widely used to perturb the physiological and
pathological dynamics of neuronal circuits, with established applications including therapeutic interventions for
neurological disorders such as epilepsy, dementia, and Pa
Funded Awards
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) BRAIN Initiative funds a wide-variety of research: toolmakers, trainees, individual labs testing new hypotheses, and large, team-based efforts aiming to catalyze neuroscience inquiry forward. Explore NIH BRAIN Initiative funded awards listed below. Click on the project title to learn more about it within NIH RePORTER.
To see more NIH-funded awards and associated publications, please visit the NIH RePORTER.
Title
Investigator(s)
Institution
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunity #
Project #
Title
Multi-modal, large-scale characterization of cellular and cell-type-specific effects with electric stimulation in rodent and human brain
Investigator
Soo Yeun Lee
Institute
allen institute
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Title
Multimodal study of infra-slow propagating brain activity
Investigator
Xiao Liu
Institute
pennsylvania state university, the
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY
The highly-organized intrinsic brain activity, as measured by resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging
(rsfMRI), is being widely used to measure functional brain connectivity in both healthy subjects and patient
groups, despite the underlying neural mechanisms remain large
Title
Multiplexed Nanoscale Protein Mapping Through Expansion Microscopy and Immuno-SABER
Investigator
Edward S. Boyden, Peng Yin
Institute
massachusetts institute of technology
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Tools for surveying brain cell types and circuits must be scalable, both in the number of molecular targets
visualizable at once, and in the size of the tissues that can be assessed.
Title
Multiplexing working memory and timing: Encoding retrospective and prospective information in transient neural trajectories.
Investigator
Dean V Buonomano, Peyman Golshani
Institute
university of california los angeles
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Abstract
A general principle of brain function is the ability to store information about the past to better predict and prepare for the
future.
Title
Multiscale imaging of marmoset cortex during visual object recognition and learning
Investigator
Elias Issa
Institute
columbia university health sciences
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Anthropoid primates (monkeys, apes, and humans) are distinguished from their phylogenetically nearest
relatives (lemurs, tree shrews, and rodents) by an elaboration of the cerebral cortex including changes in
cellular composition of the cortical circuit.
Title
Neural basis of causal inference: representations, circuits, and dynamics
Investigator
Gregory C Deangelis
Institute
university of rochester
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary
The same pattern of neural activity can correspond to multiple events in the world. Signals sweeping across
the retina, for instance, might be generated by a moving object or by the animal's self-motion.
Title
Neural circuit computations for visual motion during natural primate behaviors
Investigator
Lawrence Kevin Cormack, Gert Cauwenberghs, Mary M Hayhoe, Alexander C Huk, Cory T Miller, Cristopher M Niell
Institute
university of texas at austin
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY / ABSTRACT
Our current understanding of primate motion perception is often lauded as one of the great achievements of
computational systems neuroscience.
Title
Neural circuitry for observational learning of maternal behavior
Investigator
Amy Lemessurier
Institute
new york university school of medicine
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary/Abstract
Behaviors essential for survival, including parenting behaviors, are driven by neural circuits that arise from
combinations of genetics and experience-dependent learning.
Title
Neural coding and functional organization of the octopus visual system
Investigator
Cristopher M Niell
Institute
university of oregon
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
ABSTRACT
Cephalopods have large and complex brains, and in particular a highly capable visual system.
However, their brains evolved independently from vertebrates, and very little is known about how neural
circuits in the cephalopod brain process visual information.
Title
Neural Electrodes with Enhanced Charge Injection and Reduced Interfacial Impedance Using Graphenated Carbon Nanotubes Coated With Atomic Layer-Deposited Platinum Nanoparticles
Investigator
Charles Bernard Parker
Institute
duke university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
The objective of this project is to evaluate graphenated carbon nanotubes (gCNTs) as lower impedance,
smaller electrodes for neurostimulation, using deep brain stimulation (DBS) as a test case, with the long-term
goal of developing a new type of neural electrode with lower impedance and smaller size
Title
Neural mechanisms linking need to reward
Investigator
Joshua D Berke, Zachary A. Knight
Institute
university of california, san francisco
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Abstract
Behavior is motivated by reward, and the most powerful rewards are those that satisfy a physiologic need. For
decades, neuroscientists have studied the midbrain dopamine system to understand reward and hypothalamic
circuits to understand sensing of internal needs.
Title
Neurobiology of Social Behavior: Circuit Analysis in Early Life
Investigator
Maya Opendak
Institute
new york university school of medicine
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary
My long-termcareer goal is to establish a research laboratory that dissects functional microcircuits supporting
flexible social behavior in typical and perturbed development.
Title
NeuroEthics of Non-Therapeutic Invasive Human Neurophysiologic Research
Investigator
Ashley L Feinsinger, Nader Pouratian
Institute
university of california los angeles
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary/Abstract
The BRAIN Initiative has made a significant investment in invasive human neuroscientific studies that take
advantage of unique neurosurgical opportunities to study basic human neuroscience without therapeutic intent.
These non-therapeutic studies are of particular ethical in
Title
NeuroExplorer: Ultra-high Performance Human Brain PET Imager for Highly-resolved In Vivo Imaging of Neurochemistry
Investigator
Richard E. Carson, Hongdi Li, Jinyi Qi
Institute
yale university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Research applications of brain Positron Emission Tomography (PET) have been in place for over 40 years.
The combination of quantitative PET systems with novel radiotracers has led to a numerous imaging para-
digms to understand normal brain physiology including neurotransmitter dynamics and receptor
Title
Neuronal mechanisms of human episodic memory
Investigator
Adam Nathaniel Mamelak, Ueli Rutishauser
Institute
cedars-sinai medical center
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary
The rapid formation of new memories and the recall of old memories to inform decisions is essential for human
cognition, but the underlying neural mechanisms remain poorly understood.
Title
Neuronal mechanisms of visually-driven aggressive behavior
Investigator
Andrés Bendesky
Institute
columbia univ new york morningside
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary
Aggression is a fundamental social behavior. Though widespread, the stimuli that modulate aggression
differ between species. Primates rely strongly on visual cues, while in rodents and insects olfactory stimuli are
essential.
Title
NeuroPhIBER: A Nimble Fiber-Optically Read Silicon Microelectrode Array
Investigator
Amy Carole Foster, Mark A Foster
Institute
johns hopkins university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary/ Abstract
Advancements in microelectrode array (MEA) neural probes have allowed the number of neurons that can be
simultaneously recorded by implantable electrodes to roughly double every 7 years since the 1970s, with present
state of the art devices allowing for simultaneous recordi
Title
Neuropixels NXT: Integrated Silicon Probes for Large Scale Extracellular Recording in Rodents and Primates
Investigator
Timothy D Harris
Institute
johns hopkins university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
1 Project Summary: The BRAIN 2025 Report, with the goal to “produce a dynamic picture of the functioning brain
2 by developing and applying improved methods for large-scale monitoring of neural activity” is directly
3 addressed by this application.
Title
Neurostimulation and Recording of Real World Spatial Navigation in Humans
Investigator
Nanthia A Suthana
Institute
university of california los angeles
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary/Abstract
Decades of research and clinical observations have established that successful spatial navigation and memory
depend on the hippocampus and associated structures in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), including entorhinal,
perirhinal and parahippocampal cortices [1, 2].
Title
Neurostimulation by Ultrasound: Physical, Biophysical, and Neural Mechanisms
Investigator
Stephen A Baccus, Kim Butts-Pauly, Butrus T Khuri-Yakub, Merritt C Maduke
Institute
stanford university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY
The goal of this project is to understand the neurobiological underpinnings of the effects of ultrasound
(US) on neural activity. US can modify action potential activity in neurons in vitro and in vivo without damaging
neural tissue.