The ability to measure and manipulate local brain circuit activity in living, behaving animals is essential to understanding the complexities of brain function and dysfunction.
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
Commercial translation of high-density carbon fiber electrode arrays for multi-modal analysis of neural microcircuits
Investigator
Rajmohan Bhandari, Cynthia Anne Chestek, Daniel Powell, Florian Solzbacher
Institute
blackrock microsystems
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Title
Contextual modulation of visual decision-making across the visual hierarchy
Investigator
Pamela Reinagel
Institute
university of california, san diego
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary/Abstract In sensory decision-making, choices are influenced by non-sensory factors such as motivation, attention, and recent trial history.
Title
Continuous development of nTracer2 and its deployment at NIH image repositories
Investigator
Dawen Cai, Yan Yan
Institute
university of michigan at ann arbor
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Abstract In response to the BRAIN Initiative “Integration and Analysis of BRAIN Initiative Data” FOA, we propose further developing nTracer2, a cloud-based platform for brain image visualization and neuron tracing in the web browser.
Title
CONVERGENT PROCESSING ACROSS VISUAL AND HAPTIC CIRCUITS FOR 3D SHAPE PERCEPTION
Investigator
Charles E Connor, Daniel Hans O'connor
Institute
johns hopkins university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: Vision and touch share a critical function—perception of 3D object shape.
Title
Cortical assembly formation through excitatory/inhibitory circuit plasticity
Investigator
Brent D. Doiron, Anne-Marie Michelle Oswald
Institute
university of chicago
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Cortical assembly formation through excitatory/inhibitory circuit plasticity. Project Summary Throughout the brain, sensory information is thought to be represented by the joint activity of neurons that form functionally connected assemblies.
Title
Cortical circuit dynamics underlying multisensory decision making
Investigator
Christopher R Fetsch
Institute
johns hopkins university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary To navigate and guide locomotion in a complex 3D environment, humans and animals must make countless judgments of their direction of self-motion, or heading.
Title
Cross-modal sensory interactions, processing, and representation in the Drosophila brain
Investigator
Itai Cohen, Noah John Cowan, Jessica Fox, Sung Soo Kim
Institute
cornell university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Robust navigation, which is critical for an animal’s survival, requires the processing of complex sensory information spanning different modalities and time scales.
Title
DDALAB: Identifying Latent States from Neural Recordings with Nonlinear Causal Analysis
Investigator
Terrence J Sejnowski
Institute
university of california, san diego
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Summary The goal of this proposal is to develop DDALAB, a software platform that will make it possible for researchers to identify latent cortical states and analyze the flow of information in large populations of neurons using Delay Differential Analysis (DDA).
Title
Deconstructing the sertonin system in the mouse brain
Investigator
Liqun Luo, Scott Warren Linderman
Institute
stanford university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY Serotonin is an evolutionarily conserved neurotransmitter that modulates the activity of excitatory and inhibitory neurons throughout the entire mammalian brain and is thus essential for diverse aspects of physiology and behavior.
Title
Developing novel neural network tools for accurate and interpretable dynamical modeling of neural circuits
Investigator
Christopher Versteeg
Institute
emory university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Abstract In recent years, the number of neurons that we can record simultaneously has seen an exponential increase, presenting a daunting challenge: how do we analyze these complex and high-dimensional datasets to gain insight into how neural circuits perform computation?
Title
Dissecting modular and redundant organization of cortical circuits
Investigator
Shaul Druckmann, Nuo Li
Institute
baylor college of medicine
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Abstract In many cognitive processes, information is processed in a parallel manner across many brain regions.
Title
Dissemination of the Human Neocortical Neurosolver (HNN) software for circuit level interpretation of human MEG/EEG
Investigator
Stephanie Ruggiano Jones
Institute
brown university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
HNN U24 DISSEMINATION PROJECT SUMMARY The Human Neocortical Neurosolver (HNN) neural modeling tool was developed with BRAIN Initiative funding (R01EB022889: 09/2016–06/2020) to meet the Initiative’s goal to “develop innovative technologies to understand brain circuits and ensembles of circuits th
Title
Distinct contributions of converging neural pathways to auditory learning
Investigator
Santiago Jaramillo, James Murray
Institute
university of oregon
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Effective interpretation of sensory stimuli relies on the ability to discriminate stimulus features and link them to appropriate behavioral responses depending on past experience.
Title
Dynamic entanglements: the functional role and mechanistic basis of inter-individual neural synchrony
Investigator
Zoe Rebecca Donaldson, Yevgenia Kozorovitskiy, John Rogers
Institute
northwestern university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY The vertebrate brain has evolved to enable complex social interactions, essential for survival. Brains of animals engaged in a shared social interaction exhibit inter-brain synchronization of neural activity, detectable at several levels of analysis.
Title
Extending ezBIDS, NiiVue and dcm2niix for user-friendly cloud-based integration and visualization
Investigator
Christopher Rorden
Institute
university of south carolina at columbia
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary/Abstract Cloud-based analyses and easily shared data formats are revolutionizing neuroimaging. We will develop software to fill gaps created by these two trends. We will develop and refine software to visualize and analyze the data from the BRAIN Initiative.
Title
Functions of locus coeruleus norepinephrine neurons in decision making across multiple timescales
Investigator
Jeremiah Yaacov Cohen, Daniel Hans O'connor
Institute
johns hopkins university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
SUMMARY Norepinephrine (NE) is a neurotransmitter released by a small number of neurons in the locus coeruleus (LC), with extensive innervation of the neocortex. Prior work in humans and other mammals led to the hypothesis that LC-NE neurons modulate multiple forms of decision making.
Title
Functions of the Cortical Amygdala in social behavior
Investigator
Antonio V Aubry
Institute
icahn school of medicine at mount sinai
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary Aggression is an evolutionarily conserved behavior that controls social hierarchies and protects valuable resources like mates, food, and territory. In most cases, aggression is a necessary, adaptive component of social behavior.
Title
High-throughput 3D mapping of large mammalian brains via integration of precision tissue sectioning and light sheet imaging
Investigator
Ji Wang, Nicholas Bruce Evans, Hsuan Lee, Jeffrey Stirman
Institute
lifecanvas technologies, inc.
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Whole-brain mapping at the cellular and subcellular levels is crucial to systematically understand brain functions and disorders.
Title
Identifying human-specific neural progenitors and their role in neurodevelopment
Investigator
Sumin Jang
Institute
columbia university health sciences
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Humans have highly advanced cognitive abilities and motor skills, characteristics which are reflected in the enlarged size and cell diversity of our central nervous system (CNS).
Title
Identifying the neural mechanisms of goal-directed decision-making in Parkinson's disease using closed-loop deep brain stimulation
Investigator
Colin Hoy
Institute
university of california, san francisco
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
TITLE: IDENTIFYING THE NEURAL MECHANISMS OF GOAL-DIRECTED DECISION-MAKING IN PARKINSON’S DISEASE USING CLOSED-LOOP DEEP BRAIN STIMULATION PROJECT SUMMARY People with Parkinson’s disease commonly suffer from non-motor symptoms, including motivation deficits, that impact quality of life more than c