Project Summary
Cell signaling pathways in the brain are an essential part of a complex system regulating the activity and
coordination of neuronal networks.
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 #
TitleDevelopment of kinase biosensors for multiplex neuronal imaging of signaling pathways in behaving mice
Investigator
Richard L Huganir, Jin Zhang
Institute
johns hopkins university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
TitleDevelopment of opioid and ketamine probes for in vivo photopharmacology
Investigator
Matthew Ryan Banghart, Conor M Liston
Institute
university of california, san diego
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary
Pharmacological probes are widely used to study the nervous system. Despite often exhibiting exquisite specificity for target receptors, due to diffusion, traditional small molecule drugs act slowly and with spatial imprecision.
TitleDissecting circuit and cellular mechanisms for limb motor control
Investigator
John Tuthill
Institute
university of washington
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Motor neurons connect to muscles and comprise the major output of the nervous system. Patterns of
neural activity in motor neurons cause temporally precise muscle contractions, producing coordinated
and flexible behavior.
TitleDissecting the role of cortico-basal ganglia circuit diversity in action learning from reinforcement
Investigator
Alice Mosberger
Institute
columbia university health sciences
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary/Abstract
To learn novel actions through reinforcement, a fundamental mechanism of motor learning, the brain needs to
causally link previously performed movements to their resulting outcomes.
TitleDissection of Cell Type Specific Contributions to Motor Learning Circuits
Investigator
Lina Marcela Carmona
Institute
columbia university health sciences
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Abstract
Whether riding your bike down a narrow path or reaching for your favorite cookie in a small box, many of our
daily actions require skilled and accurate movements. However, to achieve proficiency, these motor skills must
first be learned through the process of motor learning.
TitleDissection of spatiotemporal activity from large-scale, multi-modal, multi-resolution hippocampal-neocortical recordings.
Investigator
Gyorgy Buzsaki, Zhe Sage Chen
Institute
new york university school of medicine
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY/ ABSTRACT
Advances in neurotechnologies are producing large and complex datasets at unprecedented rate.
TitleDissemination of FlyWire, A Whole-Brain Connectomics Resource
Investigator
Mala Murthy
Institute
princeton university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
This proposal will disseminate FlyWire, a Drosophila whole brain connectomics resource. We
used advances in AI to segment all neurons from a whole brain EM volume called FAFB.
TitleDissemination of MAPseq and BARseq for high-throughput brain mapping
Investigator
Anthony M Zador
Institute
cold spring harbor laboratory
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
The goal of this project is to disseminate MAPseq and BARseq to the broader neuroscience
community. These are novel methods developed in my laboratory based on high-throughput DNA
sequencing for determining neuronal circuitry.
TitleDistributed Neural Activity Patterns Underlying Practice-Based Learning
Investigator
Kimberly Reinhold
Institute
harvard medical school
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY / ABSTRACT
To survive, animals must learn appropriate associations between sensory cues and motor actions through a
process of trial and error.
TitleEarly-Life Stress Drives Increased Heroin Vulnerability: Role of D3 Receptors
Investigator
Brianna Elyse George
Institute
wake forest university health sciences
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY
Stress and addiction are intricately linked neural processes. Acute stress can serve as a stimulus for relapse to
compulsive drug seeking following abstinence, and chronic stress can induce escalated drug intake to multiple
classes of drugs.
TitleEfficient Two-Photon Voltage Imaging of Neuronal Populations at Behavioral Timescales
Investigator
Jerry L Chen, Vincent A Pieribone, Michelle Yen-Ling Sander
Institute
boston university (charles river campus)
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY
Understanding how information is processed in the mammalian neocortex has been a longstanding
question in neuroscience. While the action potential is the fundamental bit of information, how these
spikes encode representations and drive behavior remains unclear.
TitleElucidating Principles of Sensorimotor Control using Deep Learning
Investigator
Shreya Saxena
Institute
university of florida
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary
How do distributed neural circuits drive purposeful movements from the complex musculoskeletal system?
TitleEmpirical Power Analysis Tool for fMRI
Investigator
Stephanie Noble
Institute
yale university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research has transformed our understanding of human brain
function and disease and is flourishing under unprecedented international funding, including dedicated support
from the BRAIN Initiative.
TitleEnabling precise cell-type-specific dissection of orientation and memory circuits in retrosplenial cortex
Investigator
Omar Jamil Ahmed
Institute
university of michigan at ann arbor
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
In humans, damage to a brain region called the retrosplenial cortex leads to pronounced spatial disorientation
and severe retrograde and anterograde memory deficits.
TitleEngagement and outreach to achieve a FAIR data ecosystem for the BICAN
Investigator
Hua Xu, Guo-Qiang Zhang, Wenjin Jim Zheng
Institute
university of texas hlth sci ctr houston
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
As a part of BRAIN 2.0, the BRAIN Initiative Cell Atlas Network (BICAN) is expected to advance fundamental knowledge and enabling technology for classifying human brain cell types, understanding their organizational principles, and providing open-access digital brain cell reference atlases, emphasiz
TitleEngineering the Neuronal Response to Electrical Microstimulation
Investigator
Mark E. Orazem, Kevin J. Otto
Institute
university of florida
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Our proposed efforts align directly with a goal of RFA-NS-18-019: optimization of transformative technologies for modulation in the nervous system.
TitleExploring the Parameter Space of High Frequency Magnetic Perturbation in Manipulating Neural Excitability and Plasticity.
Investigator
Ludovica Labruna
Institute
magnetic tides, inc.
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) has attracted considerable interest in the cognitive neuroscience community, providing an important basic research tool to study brain function, with emerging clinical applications to enhance function in individuals with neurological disorders.
TitleFast Multichannel Magneto-thermal Genetics
Investigator
Jacob T. Robinson
Institute
rice university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Abstract
Precisely timed activation of genetically targeted cells is a powerful tool for studying neural circuits. Neuronal modulation (activating or inhibiting select neurons) allows us to investigate how neural activity causes changes in animal behavior.
TitleFeedback and feedforward gating of sensory signaling through timing in the thalamocortical loop
Investigator
Garrett B. Stanley
Institute
georgia institute of technology
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Feedback and feedforward gating of sensory signaling through timing in the thalamocortical loop
Nearly all sensory experience begins in the periphery, generating sensory signals travelling through the thalamus
before reaching neocortex.
TitleFluorescence-based methods for microconnectivity analysis in neocortex
Investigator
Alison L Barth
Institute
carnegie-mellon university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
ABSTRACT
A comprehensive census of neural cell types in the brain, together with molecular-genetic
resources for cell-type specific labeling, is revolutionizing our ability to detect and monitor age,
disease, and experience-dependent changes in neural connectivity.