DESCRIPTION: Conditionally silencing the activity of specific neural ensembles is a powerful approach for mapping the circuits responsible for specific behaviors.
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 #
TitleOptical tools for extended neural silencing
Investigator
Matthew J Kennedy, Chandra L Tucker
Institute
university of colorado denver
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
TitleOptical Tools to Study Neuropeptide Signaling
Investigator
Mathew Tantama
Institute
purdue university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Neuropeptides are neuromodulators that regulate the physiology of cells, synapses, and neural circuits in the brain.
TitlePotentiometric photoacoustic imaging of brain activity enabled by near infrared to visible light converting nanoparticles
Investigator
Paras N. Prasad, Jun Xia
Institute
state university of new york at buffalo
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application is in response to the President's Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative.
TitleSCAPE microscopy for high-speed in-vivo volumetric microscopy in behaving organisms
Investigator
Elizabeth M. C. Hillman
Institute
columbia university health sciences
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Despite the growing availability of optical markers of neuronal activity, as well as genetic tools for optical manipulation, current optical microscopy techniques for imaging the intact brain at cellular resolution have approached their limits, particularly
TitleSelf-Motile Electrodes for Three Dimensional, Non-perturbative Recording and Stimulation
Investigator
Nicholas A Melosh
Institute
stanford university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Transitioning from small numbers of neural depth recording electrodes to many thousands requires consideration not only of data management, but also how to non-destructively deliver these electrodes into the desired brain regions.
TitleSonoelectric tomography (SET): High-resolution noninvasive neuronal current tomography
Investigator
Matti Hamalainen, Partha Pratim Mitra, Nathan J. Mcdannold, Yoshio Okada
Institute
boston children's hospital
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Presently there is no imaging technology capable of detecting neuronal activity in the entire human brain with millisecond and millimeter resolution.
TitleSpace-division multiplexing optical coherence tomography for large-scale, millisecond resolution imaging of neural activity
Investigator
Yevgeny Berdichevsky, Chao Zhou
Institute
lehigh university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION There is a great interest in imaging neuronal activity based on changes in fast intrinsic optical signals (e.g. changes in light scattering and phase) that occur on a millisecond timescale.
TitleSparse, Strong and Large Area Targeting of Genetically Encoded Indicators
Investigator
Srdjan D Antic, Thomas Knopfel
Institute
university of connecticut sch of med/dnt
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Electrical (voltage) signal is the primary substrate of information processing in the brain. Detecting and recording voltage changes from neurons in living animals remains the ultimate goal of experimental neuroscience to the present day.
TitleSub-micrometer x-ray tomography for neuroanatomy
Investigator
Chris Johnson Jacobsen, Konrad P. Kording
Institute
northwestern university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
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.
TitleSYNPLA: 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.
TitleToward functional molecular neuroimaging using vasoactive probes in human subjects.
Investigator
Alan Jasanoff
Institute
massachusetts institute of technology
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The establishment of new and precise strategies for mapping brain activity in human subjects is one of the highest priorities of the BRAIN Initiative.
TitleTracing 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.
TitleUltra-miniaturized single fiber probe for functional brain imaging in freely moving animals
Investigator
Jerome Mertz
Institute
boston university (charles river campus)
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Microscope techniques to image inside brain tissue are generally limited by poor depth penetration.
TitleUse of Calcium Indicator Proteins in Spike Counting Mode
Investigator
David A Digregorio, Samuel Sheng-Hung Wang
Institute
princeton university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A long-term goal of the BRAIN Initiative is to track activity in large numbers of neurons individually in behaving animals, thus capturing the information processing that is done by brain circuitry.
TitleVirtual Brain Electrode (VIBE) for Imaging Neuronal Activity
Investigator
Jeff W Bulte
Institute
hugo w. moser res inst kennedy krieger
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A technique will be developed to determine where in the brain the signal in an electroencephalogram (EEG) is originating from in order to generate a "voxel-specific EEG", much like the signal coming from an implanted electrode.
TitleWavefront sensor for deep imaging of the brain
Investigator
Chris Xu
Institute
cornell university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Optical imaging holds tremendous promise in our endeavor to understand brain functions. The major challenges for optical brain imaging are depth and speed.
TitleAdvancing MRI & MRS Technologies for Studying Human Brain Function and Energetics
Investigator
Wei Chen, Qing X Yang
Institute
university of minnesota
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging (MRI) and in vivo MR spectroscopy (MRS) techniques have become indispensable tools for imaging brain structure, function, connectivity, neurochemistry and neuroenergetics, and for investigating neurological disorders.
TitleAn 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.
TitleBehavioral 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?
TitleCalcium sensors for molecular fMRI
Investigator
Alan Jasanoff
Institute
massachusetts institute of technology
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The development of minimally invasive direct readouts of neural activity is one of the greatest challenges facing neuroscience today.