PROJECT SUMMARY The courtship song of male zebra finches is a classical model for learning complex motor behaviors and shows important parallels to human speech and communication. Male zebra finches learn a song from an adult tutor and then reproduce this song throughout adulthood.
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
Integrating single-cell connectivity, gene expression, and function in zebra finches
Investigator
Justus M Kebschull
Institute
johns hopkins university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Title
Integrative Analysis of Adaptive Information Processing and Learning-Dependent Circuit Reorganization in the Auditory System
Investigator
Wiliam Mcintyre Debello, Mark H Ellisman, Brian J Fischer, Jose L Pena
Institute
albert einstein college of medicine
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Abstract Decades of research have revealed the principles of information processing that give rise to auditory spatial tuning and experience-dependent adaptive plasticity in the owl auditory system.
Title
Integrative circuit dissection in the behaving nonhuman primate
Investigator
Wyeth Daniel Bair, Farran Briggs, Anitha Pasupathy, Anqi Wu
Institute
university of washington
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
In natural vision, recognizing objects based on the retinal image is challenging and is often an ill-posed problem because a single image is compatible with multiple interpretations.
Title
Intersubject Synchrony in Neural and Behavioral Representations of Social Uncertainty Among Adults and Adolescents
Investigator
William John Mitchell
Institute
temple univ of the commonwealth
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary Uncertainty is an often pervasive, stressful experience that arises when making judgments about others' beliefs, intentions, or emotions (i.e., ambiguous social situations). Excessive uncertainty can have pernicious effects upon memory, mood, and physical and mental outcomes.
Title
Intrinsic and Extrinsic factors regulating neurogenic competence in hypothalamic tanycytes
Investigator
Leighton Hosea Duncan
Institute
johns hopkins university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Hypothalamic tanycytes have limited postnatal neurogenic competence, but the extrinsic and intrinsic factors that promote this are not well understood. My predoctoral research identified a defined developmental window during which neurogenic competence is lost from hypothalamic tanycytes.
Title
Investigating the Recruitment of Different Neuronal Subpopulations by Intracortical Micro Stimulation Using Two Photon-Microscopy
Investigator
Christopher Hughes
Institute
university of pittsburgh at pittsburgh
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary Intracortical microstimulation (ICMS) of the sensory cortices is an emerging approach to restore sensation to people who have lost it due to neurological injury or disease.
Title
Investigations of cAMP-dependent brain-barrier permeability in choroid plexus
Investigator
Dario Xavier Figueroa Velez
Institute
boston children's hospital
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
PROJECT SUMMARY The choroid plexus (ChP) comprises a network of cells that form a critical brain barrier that can mediate secondary damage in certain brain disorders and trauma. The Lehtinen lab has developed a suite of tools to study the ChP across development ex vivo and in vivo.
Title
Large-scale calcium and voltage imaging to illuminate neural mechanisms of visual experience
Investigator
Michelle Redinbaugh
Institute
stanford university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary: The majority of lived experience depends on neural activity conveying sensory information about the world.
Title
Live spike sorting for multichannel and high-channel recordings
Investigator
Tim Chifong Lei, Achim Klug
Institute
popneuron, llc
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
The goal of this project is to create two prototypes of a novel live spike sorting system which can be used by investigators to spike sort streams of neural data recorded by multi-channel, high channel and ultra-high channel probes.
Title
Local Circuit Control of Rapid Plasticity and Tunable Ensemble Formation in the Hippocampus
Investigator
Attila Losonczy, Ivan Soltesz
Institute
columbia university health sciences
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary/Abstract Neural representations supporting spatial and episodic learning form, and transform rapidly in the mammalian hippocampus.
Title
Manipulation of neuron identity towards in-vivo circuit reprogramming in the cerebral cortex
Investigator
Lee O Vaasjo
Institute
tulane university of louisiana
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary Sub-Cerebral Projection Neurons (SCPNs) are a clinically relevant neuron class that controls voluntary movement and whose loss in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Fronto-temporal dementia or injury (e.g., damaged by spinal cord injury) leads to paralysis.
Title
Massively Parallel Optoacoustic Retinal Stimulation at Micrometer-Resolution
Investigator
Chen Yang
Institute
boston university (charles river campus)
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary Retinal degenerative diseases are the leading cause of irreversible vision loss. There is no approved medical intervention that could cure or reverse the courses of retinal degenerative diseases.
Title
Mechanisms of experience-dependent plasticity in an innate social behavior circuit
Investigator
Emma E Boxer
Institute
california institute of technology
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary Many social behaviors, such as defense and aggression, are innate- requiring no prior experience to be expressed and presumably ‘hardwired’ into neural circuits.
Title
Mechanisms of neural circuit dynamics in working memory and decision-making
Investigator
Carlos D Brody, Ila R. Fiete, Mark S Goldman, Jonathan William Pillow, Hyunjune Sebastian Seung, David W Tank, Samuel Sheng-Hung Wang, Ilana Witten
Institute
princeton university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary/Abstract: Overall The overarching goal of this U19 program is to determine how neural computations across brain regions produce two core cognitive processes, working memory and decision-making, and thus to derive fundamental principles of brain function.
Title
Mechanoluminescent nanomaterials for optogenetic neuromodulation
Investigator
Jin Nam, Yadong Yin
Institute
university of california riverside
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
The exponential surge in the prevalence of neurological diseases/disorders, partly due to the rapid growth in the aged population, poses a significant challenge to the prevention and treatment of impairments in cognitive, sensory, and motor functions.
Title
Modeling and Mapping Human Action Regulation Networks
Investigator
Vasileios N Christopoulos, Nader Pouratian
Institute
ut southwestern medical center
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Abstract Humans can rapidly regulate actions according to updated demands of the environment.
Title
Models for accumulation of evidence through sequences in a navigation-based, decision-making task
Investigator
Lindsey Shoemaker Brown
Institute
princeton university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Decision making is a fundamental cognitive process, and many decisions are based on gradually accumulated evidence. Thus, it is critical to understand the mechanistic basis underlying this accumulation process.
Title
Multiphon imaging for understanding social brain function in tadpoles
Investigator
Na Ji, Lauren A O'connell
Institute
stanford university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary Mother-infant bonding is a key relationship that lays a foundation for wellness throughout life. Social recognition is an important component of this relationship, as infants imprint on the smell of their mothers and use olfaction to distinguish their mother from others.
Title
Multiplex Imaging of Brain Activity and Plasticity with Optimized FRET/FLIM-based Sensors
Investigator
Daniel A Dombeck, Oliver Griesbeck, Ryohei Yasuda
Institute
northwestern university
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Project Summary Plasticity is a fundamental aspect of neuronal circuits across all species. It is at the base of learning and memory, sensory adaption, and many disease-related processes such as addiction, chronic pain or regeneration.
Title
Multiplexed Sensing and Control of Neuromodulators and Peptides in the Awake Brain
Investigator
Mark L Andermann
Institute
beth israel deaconess medical center
Fiscal Year
Funding Opportunities Number
Project Number
Summary Imbalanced levels of neuromodulators and other chemical signals contribute to a host of neurological disorders.