DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Anatomy defines the `reference' atlas for all of neuroscience. It is one of the most important markers of disease or damage to the brain, and constrains the circuitry of neural computation. However, brain maps are fundamentally incomplete.
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
Sub-micrometer x-ray tomography for neuroanatomy
Investigator
Chris Johnson Jacobsen, Konrad P. Kording
Institute
northwestern university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Title
SYNPLA: A scaleable method for monitoring circuit-specific learning-induced changes in synaptic strength
Investigator
Roberto Malinow, Anthony M Zador
Institute
cold spring harbor laboratory
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this application is to develop SYNPLA, a specific, selective and high-throughput method for marking experience-induced plasticity with single synapse resolution.
Title
Tracing Brain Circuits by Transneuronal Control of Transcription
Investigator
Elizabeth Jennifer Hong, Carlos Lois, Kai G Zinn
Institute
california institute of technology
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Understanding the computations that take place in brain circuits will require identifying the wiring diagrams of those circuits. In recent years seveal new methods have been developed to identify the brain's wiring diagrams.
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
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
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
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
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.
Title
Neural circuits in zebrafish: form, function and plasticity
Investigator
Constance L Cepko, Florian Engert, Jeff W Lichtman, Haim Sompolinsky
Institute
harvard university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): We propose to combine whole brain 2-photon imaging of neural activity in behaving larval zebrafish with detailed anatomical and connectivity information extracted from the same animals.
Title
Novel Genetic Strategy for Sparse Labeling and Manipulation of Mammalian Neurons
Investigator
Xiangdong William Yang
Institute
university of california los angeles
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Cajal revolutionized the study of the brain through the use of the Golgi stain to label cells sparsely and stochastically in a fashion that revealed a neuron's morphology in its entirety.
Title
Novel technologies for nontoxic transsynaptic tracing
Investigator
Ian R Wickersham
Institute
massachusetts institute of technology
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Genetic tools have dramatically increased the power and resolution of neuroscientific experiments, allowing monitoring and perturbation of specific neuronal populations within the brain, often in the context of complex cognitive and behavioral paradigms.
Title
Remote regulation of neural activity
Investigator
Sarah Amy Stanley
Institute
rockefeller university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A fundamental goal of neuroscience is to understand the function(s) of defined neural populations in a complex organism. We propose to develop and validate a technology for non- invasive modulation of neural activity in vivo.
Title
Revealing the connectivity and functionality of brain stem circuits
Investigator
Darwin K Berg, Martin Deschenes, Yoav Shai Freund, Martyn D Goulding, David Kleinfeld, Per M Knutsen
Institute
university of california, san diego
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Neuronal circuits in the brainstem control life-sustaining functions, in addition to driving and gating active sensation through taste, smell, and touch.
Title
The role of patterned activity in neuronal codes for behavior
Investigator
John H.r. Maunsell
Institute
university of chicago
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A key aspect of brain function is how the activity of neuronal populations encodes information that is used to guide behavior.