Abstract
Central to human and animal cognition is the idea of internal models: an internal repository of
knowledge about the structure of the world and its affordances that enables prediction and
planning. The existence of such models is fundamental to experience.
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 #
TitleTracking the emergence of internal models
Investigator
Elizabeth A Buffalo, Adrienne L Fairhall
Institute
university of washington
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
TitleTwo-photon all-optical electrophysiology in behaving mice
Investigator
Adam Ezra Cohen
Institute
harvard university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Two-photon all-optical electrophysiology in behaving mice Neurons communicate through electrical signals, so the ability to record membrane potential from dozens or hundreds of points simultaneously within the brain of a behaving animal would be a transformative capability f
TitleUltra-fast cerebral blood flow imaging for quantifying brain dynamics
Investigator
Jia Guo
Institute
university of california riverside
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Abstract/Project Summary
Blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) fMRI is widely used in neuroscience studies.
TitleUltrafast high-contrast voltage imaging in freely moving animals
Investigator
Jerome Mertz
Institute
boston university (charles river campus)
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
ABSTRACT
We propose to develop a targeted illumination confocal (TICO) microscope to enable high speed,
large-scale voltage imaging in the brain. This microscope will be based on the combination of two
key strategies. The first strategy is high-speed confocal microscopy based on line scanning.
TitleUnderstanding feedforward and feedback signaling between neuronal populations
Investigator
Adam Kohn, Christian Machens, Byron M. Yu
Institute
albert einstein college of medicine
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Summary
Most perceptual, cognitive, and motor functions rely on neuronal activity distributed across multiple networks,
often located in different brain areas.
TitleVirtual observatory of the cortex: organelles, cells, circuits, and dynamics
Investigator
Forrest Christie Collman, Nuno Macarico Da Costa, R Clay Reid, Hyunjune Sebastian Seung
Institute
allen institute
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
We propose to create VOrtex, a Virtual Observatory for the Cortex: Spanning the Scales of Organelles, Cells,
Circuits, and Dynamics.
TitleWhole-Brain Functional Imaging and Analysis of Zebrafish Sleep
Investigator
Geoffrey J Goodhill, David Aaron Prober, Thai V. Truong
Institute
california institute of technology
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
ABSTRACT
Sleep occupies a third of our lives and sleep-related ailments cost an estimated $100 billion per year, yet the
mechanisms governing its regulation remain poorly understood.
TitleA 3D multimodal micron-scale human brain atlas bridging single cell data, neuropathology and neuroradiology
Investigator
Partha Pratim Mitra, Jiangyang Zhang
Institute
cold spring harbor laboratory
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Digitized reference brains, also referred to as Common Coordinate Frameworks (CCFs), together
with superposed atlas annotations, are of central importance to neuroscience. They bear the
same relation to neuroscience as do reference genomes and genome annotations to cellular and
molecular biology.
TitleA Computational Framework for Distributed Registration of Massive Neuroscience Images
Investigator
Matthew Mccormick
Institute
kitware, inc.
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary
Neuroscience stands at the precipice of a new depth of understanding about how the brain works thanks to recent
advances in imaging data acquisition technologies such as light-sheet fluorescence microscopy (LSFM).
TitleA MEMS-Based High-Throughput Photostimulation Device with Commercial Backplane Integration
Investigator
Janelle Claire Shane
Institute
boulder nonlinear systems, inc.
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Boulder Nonlinear Systems (BNS) and Prof. Rikky Muller at UC-Berkeley propose a two-phase effort to address current speed limitations
in holographic photostimulation.
TitleA multi-plane 3-photon microscope for volume imaging in NHP cortex
Investigator
Jack Waters
Institute
allen institute
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT ABSTRACT
Recent advances in microscopy permit volume imaging - the near-simultaneous imaging of many neurons in a circuit -
with 2-photon (2P) excitation, yielding new insights into the circuits underlying relatively simple behaviors.
TitleA regulome and transcriptome atlas of fetal and adult human neurogenesis
Investigator
Long Cai, Patrick R Hof, Panagiotis Roussos, Nenad Sestan, Guo-Cheng Yuan
Institute
icahn school of medicine at mount sinai
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY
Dynamic changes in the spatiotemporal patterning of transcription factor binding on cis-regulatory DNA
elements drives the developmental transition of cell lineages during neurogenesis.
TitleA robust, low-cost platform for EM connectomics
Investigator
Daniel Joseph Bumbarger, R Clay Reid
Institute
allen institute
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary/Abstract
Over the past decade, serial-section electron microscopy has come into its own as a method to study the
connectivity of neural circuits, from local circuits in mammals to entire invertebrate brains.
TitleA scalable mass spectrometry platform for proteome mapping of brain tissues
Investigator
Tujin Shi
Institute
battelle pacific northwest laboratories
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
ABSTRACT
The brain is the most complex organ in the mammalian body. Bulk analysis obscures heterogeneity of cell
types present even in the smallest brain regions.
TitleA web-based framework for multi-modal visualization and annotation of neuroanatomical data
Investigator
David Kleinfeld, Samuel Sheng-Hung Wang
Institute
princeton university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Modern experimental approaches allow researchers to collect a variety of whole-brain data from the same animal
via different anatomical labels, including tracers, genetic markers, and fiducial marks from recording electrodes.
Unfortunately, viewing and analysis methods have
TitleAn Alignment Framework For Mapping Brain Dynamics and Substrates of Human Cognition Across Species
Investigator
Ting Xu
Institute
child mind institute, inc.
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
ABSTRACT
The non-human primate (NHP) model is critical to the advancement of translational neuroscience, as it allows
researchers to link observations regarding macroscale brain dynamics and cognition in the human to underlying
meso- and microscale phenomena that cannot be fully investigated in huma
TitleAnteroTag, a Novel Method for Trans-Synaptic Delivery of Active Agents to Map and Modify Anterograde Populations
Investigator
Jason M Christie, Adam Hantman, Michael Roland Williams
Institute
michigan state university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY
A goal of the BRAIN initiative is to develop and validate novel tools to map and manipulate neural circuits. The
definition and control of behaviorally relevant circuits requires both retrograde and anterograde trans-synaptic
technologies that perform well in vivo.
TitleBRAIN Initiative: Assessing development of event-related cortical network dynamics
Investigator
Scott Makeig, Michael Peter Milham, Arnaud Delorme
Institute
university of california, san diego
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary
The Child Mind Institute’s Healthy Brain Network (HBN) is an ongoing initiative focused on creating and
sharing a biobank of brain and behavioral data now being collected from 10,000 New York City area children
and adolescents (ages 5-21).
TitleCapturing large-scale locus coeruleus single neuron activity in behaving rats with nanoelectronic threads (NETs), an ultra-flexible multi-electrode probe
Investigator
Nelson Totah
Institute
university of helsinki
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary / Abstract
Systems neuroscience has viewed the brainstem noradrenergic nucleus, Locus Coeruleus (LC), as the
source of a global arousal signal, which modulates cognitive functions by altering operations throughout
the entire central nervous system.
TitleCell Type and Circuit Mechanisms of Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation by Sensory Entrainment
Investigator
Anton Arkhipov, Li-Huei Tsai
Institute
allen institute
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Cell Type and Circuit Mechanisms of Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation by Sensory Entrainment
Patterned sensory stimulation (PSS) is a non-invasive technique for manipulating brain activity and states,
typically employing periodic light flicker or auditory tones presented at regular intervals.
Last reviewed on July 02, 2025