Project Summary/Abstract
The brain undergoes extensive synaptic plasticity and circuit refinement during development. Similar
changes recur throughout life during learning in a more narrowly constrained manner.
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 #
TitleRole of neuronal ensembles in cortical plasticity during learning and development
Investigator
Alejandro Akrouh
Institute
columbia univ new york morningside
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
TitleSecondary analysis of resting state MEG data using the Human Neocortical Neurosolver software tool for cellular and circuit-level interpretation
Investigator
Stephanie Ruggiano Jones
Institute
brown university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary
The neuroscience community is experiencing a revolution in its ability to share and analyze vast amounts of
human brain imaging data, with support from the BRAIN Initiative and other substantial data-sharing efforts.
TitleSensory-motor strategies for odor-guided navigation
Investigator
Ian Gordon Davison
Institute
boston university (charles river campus)
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary
Animals interact with the world through dynamic, iterative sensory-motor processes that guide their
ongoing movement.
TitleStatistical machine learning tools for understanding neural ensemble representations and dynamics
Investigator
Uri Tzvi Eden, Loren M Frank, Alan David Kaplan
Institute
university of california, san francisco
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
The brain is a massively interconnected network of specialized circuits.
TitleThalamus in the middle: computations in multi-regional neural circuits
Investigator
Adam G Carter, Jayaram Chandrashekar, Jorge H Jaramillo, Karel Svoboda, Bosiljka Tasic
Institute
allen institute
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Summary, Overall (Thalamus in the middle: computations in multi-regional neural
circuits)
This collaborative project aims to uncover the logic of signal routing from subcortical areas to the frontal cortex
through the thalamus.
TitleThe Disadvantage Exposome as a Driver of Alzheimer’s Disease Pathology
Investigator
Margo Heston
Institute
university of wisconsin-madison
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
1 PROJECT SUMMARY
2 Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia worldwide, incurring a projected healthcare
3 burden of $1 trillion in the United States alone by 2060.
TitleThe Heart and the Mind: An Integrative Approach to Brain-Body Interactions in the Zebrafish
Investigator
Florian Engert, Mark C Fishman, Adrienne L Fairhall, Jeff W Lichtman, Joshua T Vogelstein
Institute
harvard university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
The heart and the mind: an integrative approach to brain-body interactions in the
zebrafish
Our current U19 has focused primarily on Exteroception, which can be defined as the accumulated sensory experience
originating from events in the outside world.
TitleThe interaction of cortical and subcortical processing in natural sensory behavior
Investigator
Cristopher M Niell, Michael Wehr
Institute
university of oregon
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Abstract
Our brains have evolved to extract relevant sensory information from rich and complex natural environments in
order to drive appropriate behavior.
TitleThe Neural Circuit Basis of Olfactory Navigation in Adult Drosophila
Investigator
Katherine Nagel
Institute
new york university school of medicine
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY
In order to forage effectively for food, the brain must integrate innate and learned information about the
value of different food odors and use this information to select navigational motor programs.
TitleThe Neural Code and Dynamics of the Reading Network
Investigator
Nitin Tandon
Institute
university of texas hlth sci ctr houston
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Reading involves complex transformations of word forms, with visual input mapped to lexical, semantic and
phonological systems in less than a second.
TitleThe Spatial and Temporal Scale of Neuromodulation in Mouse Sensory Cortex
Investigator
Jacob Reimer
Institute
baylor college of medicine
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
The neuromodulators acetylcholine (ACh) and norepinephrine (NE) are associated with an
activated cortical brain state characterized by an increase in the reliability of cortical responses
to external stimuli and enhanced performance on behavioral tasks.
TitleTracking the emergence of internal models
Investigator
Elizabeth A Buffalo, Adrienne L Fairhall
Institute
university of washington
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Abstract
Central to human and animal cognition is the idea of internal models: an internal repository of
knowledge about the structure of the world and its affordances that enables prediction and
planning. The existence of such models is fundamental to experience.
TitleUltrafast high-contrast voltage imaging in freely moving animals
Investigator
Jerome Mertz
Institute
boston university (charles river campus)
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
ABSTRACT
We propose to develop a targeted illumination confocal (TICO) microscope to enable high speed,
large-scale voltage imaging in the brain. This microscope will be based on the combination of two
key strategies. The first strategy is high-speed confocal microscopy based on line scanning.
TitleUnderstanding feedforward and feedback signaling between neuronal populations
Investigator
Adam Kohn, Christian Machens, Byron M. Yu
Institute
albert einstein college of medicine
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Summary
Most perceptual, cognitive, and motor functions rely on neuronal activity distributed across multiple networks,
often located in different brain areas.
TitleUnderstanding how cortex supports flexible sensory representations
Investigator
Katherine Charlotte Wood
Institute
university of pennsylvania
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary
Learning is a fundamental function of the brain: sensory representations must be flexible to adjust to changes in
environmental demands and experience, thus allowing us to adapt to the world around us.
TitleVirtual observatory of the cortex: organelles, cells, circuits, and dynamics
Investigator
Forrest Christie Collman, Nuno Macarico Da Costa, R Clay Reid, Hyunjune Sebastian Seung
Institute
allen institute
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
We propose to create VOrtex, a Virtual Observatory for the Cortex: Spanning the Scales of Organelles, Cells,
Circuits, and Dynamics.
TitleWearable RF-EEG Cap for closed loopTMS/fMRI/EEG Applications
Investigator
Lucia Isabel Navarro De Lara
Institute
massachusetts general hospital
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary
Functional MRI (fMRI) is the prevailing method for both basic research and clinical functional neuroimaging in
humans.
TitleWhole-Brain Functional Imaging and Analysis of Zebrafish Sleep
Investigator
Geoffrey J Goodhill, David Aaron Prober, Thai V. Truong
Institute
california institute of technology
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
ABSTRACT
Sleep occupies a third of our lives and sleep-related ailments cost an estimated $100 billion per year, yet the
mechanisms governing its regulation remain poorly understood.
TitleA community-driven development of the brain imaging data standard (BIDS) to describe macroscopic brain connections
Investigator
Franco Pestilli
Institute
university of texas at austin
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary/Abstract
The Brain Imaging Data Structure (BIDS) is a BRAIN initiative (R24 MH114705)
community-driven standard meant to maximize neuroimaging data sharing, and facilitate analysis tool
development.
TitleA Computational Framework for Distributed Registration of Massive Neuroscience Images
Investigator
Matthew Mccormick
Institute
kitware, inc.
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary
Neuroscience stands at the precipice of a new depth of understanding about how the brain works thanks to recent
advances in imaging data acquisition technologies such as light-sheet fluorescence microscopy (LSFM).