PROJECT SUMMARY: Behavioral dysfunction in neurodevelopmental diseases often arises from aberrant
neural circuit assembly. However, the developmental logic that dictates circuit organization, function, and
ultimately behavior remains unresolved due to the complexity of most circuits.
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
Molecular and sensory foundations of vestibular reflex circuit assembly in the larval zebrafish
Investigator
Dena Goldblatt
Institute
new york university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Title
Motor Recovery through Plasticity-Inducing Cortical Stimulation
Investigator
Steven C. Cramer, Jeffrey G Ojemann
Institute
university of washington
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Limited recovery of function after stroke remains a major problem for millions. Disability persists in
many, especially when hand function is limited. Existing therapies are limited and many have difficulties with
activities of daily living, even after rehabilitation.
Title
Multimodal dissociation of posterior cingulate cortex contributions to episodic memory
Investigator
Seth Ryan Koslov
Institute
university of pennsylvania
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary
Episodic memory is the ability to recall details about prior experiences. Researchers have historically relied on
controlled item-recognition paradigms, in complement to autobiographical recall tasks, to investigate the
biological substrates of episodic memory.
Title
Network based neuro-modulation for mesial temporal lobe epilepsy
Investigator
Behnaam Aazhang, Sandipan Pati Bankim Behari Pati, Nitin Tandon, Gregory A Worrell
Institute
university of texas hlth sci ctr houston
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Title
Neural basis of facial individual recognition in paper wasps
Investigator
Michael J Sheehan
Institute
cornell university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
The neural circuits of animals, including humans, are the combined product of adaptation by natural selection
and the evolutionary history of a species.
Title
Neural circuit control of fluid and solute clearance during sleep
Investigator
Patrick James Drew, Hajime Hirase, Douglas H Kelley, Laura Diane Lewis, Maiken Nedergaard
Institute
university of rochester
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Program abstract: This proposal aims to identify the neural circuit mechanisms that control periarterial
cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) pumping and glymphatic clearance of fluid and solutes.
Title
Neural circuit mechanisms for multisensory associative learning
Investigator
Roudabeh Behnia, Ashok Litwin-Kumar
Institute
columbia university health sciences
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary
The brain uses sensory representations to assess risk and predict reward in order to adjust behavior. Per
ception is a multisensory process. To make reliable predictions, it is advantageous for the brain to combine
more than one sensory modality to represent the world.
Title
Neural coding of natural stimuli in freely moving macaque
Investigator
Valentin Dragoi
Institute
university of texas hlth sci ctr houston
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Despite the fact that visual perception represents such a fundamental aspect of our everyday life, our knowledge
of the underlying neural coding of natural stimuli is woefully lacking.
Title
Neural mechanisms of behavioral coordination in Hydra
Investigator
Alison Hanson
Institute
columbia university health sciences
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY
How do animals coordinate their many parts to generate coherent, adaptive behavior?
Title
Neural mechanisms of taste and metabolic state integration in the brainstem
Investigator
Nilay Yapici
Institute
cornell university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
ABSTRACT
The taste of food is a critical factor that determines whether an organism will accept or reject a food source.
Title
NEURODEVELOPMENTAL FUNCTION OF HCFC1
Investigator
Victoria L Castro
Institute
university of texas el paso
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary
Mutation of HCFC1 causes a multiple congenital anomaly syndrome characterized by inborn errors of cobalamin
metabolism, intractable epilepsy, intellectual disability, and motor dysfunction.
Title
Neurodevelopmental role of a tRNA methyltransferase underlying intellectual disability
Investigator
Kimberly Rose R. Madhwani
Institute
brown university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY
Gene regulation at multiple levels is critical for nervous system development and function.
Title
New Methodologies for Connectomics
Investigator
Xiaotang Lu
Institute
harvard university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT ABSTRACT
The nervous systems of animals are comprised of neurons connected by a large number of synapses.
The resulting neural networks underlie animal behavior and contribute to the storage of learned
information in many species.
Title
Odor trail tracking: a new paradigm to unveil algorithms and neural circuits underlying active sensation and continuous decision making
Investigator
Catherine Dulac, Venkatesh N Murthy, Massimo Vergassola
Institute
harvard university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Summary
Animals actively sample sensory information, which they combine with prior knowledge to make
decisions in a sensorimotor feedback loop.
Title
Pinpointing the Cerebellum's Contribution to Social Reward Processing
Investigator
Haroon Skander Popal
Institute
temple univ of the commonwealth
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY
The cerebellum has long been thought to solely process motor information. Yet, there is a growing literature
that points to a role of the cerebellum in processes across multiple domains.
Title
PREFRONTAL CIRCUITS OF WORKING MEMORY
Investigator
Christos Constantinidis, Boris V Zemelman
Institute
vanderbilt university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Working memory, the ability to maintain and manipulate in formation in memory over a period of seconds, is a
critical component of higher cognitive functions.
Title
Probing Neural Circuits of Zebrafish Sleep with Electrophysiology and Calcium Imaging
Investigator
David Aaron Prober, Thai V. Truong
Institute
california institute of technology
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
ABSTRACT
The zebrafish has emerged as a useful model system to discover and characterize genetic and neuronal circuits
that regulate vertebrate sleep.
Title
Real-time mapping and adaptive testing for neural population hypotheses
Investigator
John Pearson
Institute
duke university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
ABSTRACT
Recent advances in neural recording technologies have made it possible to study increasingly large and di-
verse subsets of neurons, producing a growing interest in the collective computational properties of neural pop-
ulations.
Title
Revealing the mechanisms of primate face recognition with synthetic stimulus sets optimized to compare computational models
Investigator
Winrich Freiwald, Nikolaus Kriegeskorte
Institute
columbia univ new york morningside
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary
Neuroscience is entering a new era, where large-scale neural network models can be tested with unprecedent-
edly rich measurements of neural activity.
Title
Role of Endocannabinoid System in Seizure Sensitivity in Eclampsia
Investigator
Maria Jones-Muhammad
Institute
university of mississippi med ctr
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary
Preeclampsia, a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy, can advance to eclampsia, when the mother
displays novel seizures. The mechanisms that cause some preeclampsia patients to advance to
eclampsia are unknown.