DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The human brain is arguably the most complex biological structure. Understanding how many different cell types exist in the human brain and mapping neural connections are critical tasks to better understand the development and function of the brain.
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
A Novel Approach for Cell-Type Classification and Connectivity in the Human Brain
Investigator
Nenad Sestan
Institute
yale university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Title
An optogenetic toolkit for the interrogation and control of single cells.
Investigator
Gregory J Hannon
Institute
cold spring harbor laboratory
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Our understanding of brain function at the cellular and circuit level is critically dependent on the ability to interrogate and alter neural cells withhigh specificity.
Title
Behavioral readout of spatiotemporal codes dissected by holographic optogenetics
Investigator
Dmitry Rinberg, Shy Shoham
Institute
new york university school of medicine
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Two of the most fundamental questions of sensory neuroscience are: 1) how is stimulus information represented by the activity of neurons at different levels of information processing?
Title
Classification of Cortical Neurons by Single Cell Transcriptomics
Investigator
John J. Ngai
Institute
university of california berkeley
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant):Unraveling the complexity of the mammalian brain is one of the most challenging problems in biology today.
Title
Classifying Cortical Neurons by Correlating Transcriptome with Function
Investigator
Massimo Scanziani
Institute
university of california, san diego
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The classification of neurons into distinct types is a fundamental endeavor in neuroscience.
Title
Combining genetics, genomics, and anatomy to classify cell types across mammals
Investigator
Gill Bejerano, Carlos Lois, Partha Pratim Mitra, Sacha B Nelson
Institute
brandeis university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Recent genetic advances have driven significant progress in scientists' abilities to classify and map neuronal cell types within the brains of mode organisms like laboratory mice.
Title
Comprehensive Classification Of Neuronal Subtypes By Single Cell Transcriptomics
Investigator
Aviv Regev, Joshua R Sanes, Alexander F Schier, Yi Zhang
Institute
harvard university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): To understand the brain, we need a "parts list" of its cell types.
Title
Cortical circuits and information flow during memory-guided perceptual decisions
Investigator
Mriganka Sur
Institute
massachusetts institute of technology
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Perceptual decision-making involves multiple cognitive components and diverse brain regions.
Title
Crowd coding in the brain:3D imaging and control of collective neuronal dynamics
Investigator
Patrick O Kanold, Wolfgang Losert, Dietmar Plenz
Institute
univ of maryland, college park
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The cortex is a laminated structure that is thought to underlie sequential information processing.
Title
Defining cell types, lineage, and connectivity in developing human fetal cortex
Investigator
Daniel H Geschwind
Institute
university of california los angeles
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Little is currently known about the number, proportion, or lineage of distinct cell types in the developing human fetal brain.
Title
Developing drivers for neuron type-specific gene expression
Investigator
Oliver Hobert
Institute
columbia university health sciences
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Driver lines that direct Cre protein to specific neuron types have proven to be invaluable tools to not only visualize specific neuron types but also to manipulate their activity through the Cre- mediated activation of optogenetic probes or to assess gene fu
Title
DREADD2.0: AN ENHANCED CHEMOGENETIC TOOLKIT
Investigator
Jian Jin, Thomas L. Kash, Bryan L. Roth
Institute
univ of north carolina chapel hill
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative has the ambitious goal of elucidating how neuronal ensembles interactively encode higher brain processes.
Title
Epigenomic mapping approaches for cell-type classification in the brain
Investigator
M Margarita Behrens, Joseph R Ecker
Institute
salk institute for biological studies
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Understanding the exact cell-type composition in brain regions is fundamental to integrating physiological, behavioral and neurochemical data to systematically understand the brain structure and function.
Title
Establishing a Comprehensive and Standardized Cell Type Characterization Platform
Investigator
David J Anderson, Hongkui Zeng
Institute
allen institute
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The brain circuit is an intricately interconnected network of a vast number of neurons with diverse molecular, anatomical and physiological properties. Neuronal cell types are fundamental building blocks of neural circuits.
Title
Identification of enhancers whose activity defines cortical interneuron types
Investigator
John L. R. Rubenstein, Vikaas Singh Sohal
Institute
university of california, san francisco
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Molecular definitions of neural cell types largely depend on the expression of RNAs or proteins as assessed by in situ hybridization, RNA array and sequencing, and immunohistochemistry.
Title
In-vivo circuit activity measurement at single cell, sub-threshold resolution
Investigator
Craig Forest, Garrett B. Stanley
Institute
georgia institute of technology
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Neurons communicate information through fluctuations in the electrical potentials across their cellular membranes.
Title
Integrative Functional Mapping of Sensory-Motor Pathways
Investigator
Michael H Dickinson, Philip J Holmes, Richard S Mann, Rachel Wilson
Institute
california institute of technology
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of the project team is to develop a robust, multi-lab research framework, enabled by large scale imaging, which will lead to principled integrative models of ethologically-relevant behaviors that incorporate a detailed knowledge of individual cell c
Title
Mapping neuronal chloride microdomains
Investigator
Kevin J. Staley
Institute
massachusetts general hospital
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Dramatic new insights into the functioning of neural networks have been made possible by our ability to visualize neural function with calcium-sensitive fluorophores, and biology has been revolutionized by the ability to sequence and manipulate DNA, RNA, and
Title
Mapping the Developing Human Neocortex by Massively Parallel Single Cell Analysis
Investigator
Arnold Kriegstein
Institute
university of california, san francisco
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal seeks to create a single cell resolution map of the developing human neocortex.
Title
Mechanisms of neural circuit dynamics in working memory
Investigator
William Bialek, Carlos D Brody, Hyunjune Sebastian Seung, David W Tank, Samuel Sheng-Hung Wang, Ilana Witten
Institute
princeton university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Working memory, the ability to temporarily hold multiple pieces of information for mental manipulation, is central to virtually all cognitive abiliies.