Advances in neuroscience depend on robust in vivo and in vitro models with innovative technologies to carry out
functional and mechanistic studies accompanied by advanced imaging techniques.
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 Shared Neuroscience Platform for National Dissemination and Training in Brain Organogenesis, Behavioral and Brain Disease Models, Viral Vectors, and Imaging Technologies
Investigator
William T Newsome, Sergiu Pasca, Mehrdad Shamloo, Gordon X Wang
Institute
stanford university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Title
A staged, comprehensive investigation for developing insular deep brain stimulation to treat refractory chronic pain
Investigator
William Jeffrey Elias, Chang-Chia Liu
Institute
university of virginia
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY
Patients with refractory chronic pain typically do not respond to traditional analgesics or weak opioids
as these agents do not directly address the cause for their pain.
Title
A versatile approach for highly multiplexed, high-resolution imaging of endogenous molecules
Investigator
Linnaea E Ostroff
Institute
university of connecticut storrs
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary
The quest to understand the brain’s complex structure has become more challenging as the high
degree of molecular heterogeneity among brain cells has become evident in recent years.
Title
Aberrant Signaling from Brain Tumors Regulates Distant and Local Environments
Investigator
Kaysaw C Tuy
Institute
university of alabama at birmingham
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
ABSTRACT
Perturbations in redox signaling are associated with multiple neurological disorders, ranging from
neurodegenerative diseases to brain tumors.
Title
Advancing epilepsy diagnosis with flexible, high-resolution thin-film electrodes
Investigator
Robert Kyle Franklin, Daniel Friedman, Bijan Pesaran, Florian Solzbacher, Jonathan Viventi
Institute
new york university school of medicine
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary
To advance the development of next-generation personalized therapies for long-term seizure freedom, we
urgently need technologies that improve seizure diagnostics while reducing risks associated with invasive
neurosurgical procedures.
Title
An acquisition and reconstruction framework to enable mesoscale human fMRI on clinical 3 Tesla scanners
Investigator
Kawin Setsompop
Institute
stanford university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Functional MRI (fMRI) is the most widely-used tool to noninvasively measure brain function and has produced
much of our current knowledge about the functional organization of the human brain.
Title
An Ecosystem of Technology and Protocols for Adaptive Neuromodulation Research in Humans
Investigator
Peter Brunner, Kai Miller, Gregory A Worrell
Institute
mayo clinic rochester
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary/Abstract
Neurological and psychiatric disorders affect millions of people in the United States and worldwide, and produce
a third of all health care costs.
Title
An Integrated Neurochemical/Electrophysiological Recording and Neuromodulation System for Basic and Clinical Research
Investigator
Kevin Elliott Bennet, Kendall Lee
Institute
wincs international, llc
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY
WINCS International LLC, in partnership with Mayo Clinic, proposes to develop and demonstrate a highly
innovative next-generation clinical instrument together with custom user-friendly display and analysis software.
For the first time, the Multifunctional Apparatus for Voltammetry, E
Title
Anatomical connectivity and activity in primary visual cortex of mouse
Investigator
Zachary Samuel Pitkow, Andreas Tolias
Institute
baylor college of medicine
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary
Estimates of the total length of axonal "wiring" in the human brain are on the order of hundreds of thousands
of kilometers.
Title
Assessment of Behavioral Deficits in Minipig Model of Pediatric Concussion
Investigator
Alesa Hughson Netzley
Institute
michigan state university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary/Abstract
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading health concern for both children and adults worldwide.
Title
Automated microfluidic hyperpolarization reactor for neurometabolic imaging
Investigator
Patrick Tomhon, Carlos Dedesma
Institute
vizma life sciences, inc.
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Brain function is regulated by molecular signaling and metabolism, however, our ability to track neurometabolic transformations deep in the brain is very underdeveloped compared to the central role of neurometabolism in neurodegenerative disease or brain function in general.
Title
Basic neural processing mechanisms of live human face viewing
Investigator
Megan Kelley
Institute
yale university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary
Significance. The human brain has a dedicated neural system for processing other humans. However relatively
little is known about the basic mechanisms of this processing.
Title
BCI-DEF: Brain Computer Interfaces and Disability: Developing an Inclusive Ethical Framework
Investigator
Karen G Hirsch, Holly K Tabor
Institute
stanford university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary/Abstract
The objective of “Brain Computer Interfaces and Disability: Developing an Inclusive Ethical Framework (BCI-
DEF)” is to use structured vignettes, video-supported interviews, and a deliberative democracy approach to
assess and analyze diverse, critical stakeholder perspective
Title
Behavioral feedback and rewards for improving functional brain mapping in presurgical pediatric patients
Investigator
Ken Bruener, Damien A Fair, Jarod Roland
Institute
turing medical technologies inc
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Abstract/Summary
The objective of this psychological technology SBIR/STTR Fast-Track proposal is to provide an innovative
gamified biofeedback solution (software-only) to improve the effectiveness of functional Magnetic Resonance
Imaging (fMRI) for pediatric pre-neurosurgical planning.
Title
Biophysical and Neural Basis of Focused Ultrasound Stimulation
Investigator
Charles F Caskey, Li Min Chen
Institute
vanderbilt university medical center
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
This proposal responds to BRAIN Initiative RFA-NS-20-006 and aims to elucidate the neural and biophysical mechanisms of noninvasive focused ultrasound (FUS) neuromodulation.
Title
BRAIN Initiative: Hierarchical Event Descriptors (HED): a system to characterize events in neurobehavioral data
Investigator
Scott Makeig, Kay A Robbins, Arnaud Delorme
Institute
university of california, san diego
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
This two-year project will advance, integrate, document, and promote the use of the Hierarchical
Event Descriptor (HED) system to describe events in human neuroimaging and behavioral data
from research experiments and other sources in sufficient detail to support comparative analysis
of human brain
Title
BRAIN Integrated Resource for Human Anatomy and Intracranial Neurophysiology
Investigator
Dominique Duncan, Nader Pouratian
Institute
ut southwestern medical center
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Intracranial recordings in patients undergoing neurosurgical interventions provide a unique opportunity to directly
access, study, and learn about both normal human brain function and neuropsychiatric disease.
Title
Broadly Accessible Technologies for Single-cell Joint Analysis of Transcriptome and Epigenome
Investigator
Bing Ren
Institute
epigenome technologies, inc.
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Opportunity Number PA-20-265
Project Number
Histone modifications carry rich information of cellular memory and gene regulatory mechanisms.
Title
CAJAL: A computational framework for the combined morphometric, transcriptomic, and physiological analysis of cells
Investigator
Pablo Gonzalez Camara
Institute
university of pennsylvania
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
ABSTRACT
Morphology is an essential phenotype in the characterization of cells and their states. It reflects the progression
of functional cellular processes, such as morphogenesis, migration, or dendrite arborization, and can be
indicative of disease.
Title
Caring for BRAIN pioneers: Understanding and enhancing family and researcher support in neural device trials
Investigator
Sara Goering, Eran Klein
Institute
university of washington
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project abstract
BRAIN pioneers are people who take on significant risk as participants in first-in-human or early
neurotechnology studies for the sake of helping to further science.