Notices of Funding Opportunities

The common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) has emerged as a promising nonhuman primate model system to understand the primate brain. This has come about both from the realization that the behavior of the common marmoset is similar in some ways to human behavior and from recent demonstration of germline transmission of exogenous genetic information. This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) solicits applications to expand existing colonies of the common marmoset for neuroscience research in the United States, and to support the care, breeding and distribution of genetically modified marmosets, and cryopreserved embryos and gametes created by NIH-funded research programs such as the NIH BRAIN Initiative Tools for Germline Gene Editing in Marmosets research consortium. Recipients s under this NOFO are expected to expand their current marmoset colonies to provide healthy, well-characterized animals that will be made available to the neuroscience research community, and to include a plan to accept genetically modified marmosets, and cryopreserved embryos and gametes for distribution to the research community. Recipients are also expected to participate in and provide health and genetic information to an NIH-Funded Marmoset Coordination Center to help the community understand the pedigree of individuals in the captive marmoset population and improve the genetic diversity of that population across multiple colonies.

This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) solicits applications to create a Marmoset Coordination Center. The awardee will be responsible for two separate but related activities. The first activity will be to become the repository for genomic, pedigree, and event records (date of birth, medical, reproductive history) for captive marmosets. The awardee is expected to use that information to help make breeding recommendations to maximize the health and genetic diversity of the marmosets in primate colonies. Applicants are encouraged to adopt the model used by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

This notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) seeks applications proposing a set of planning activities that will lay the groundwork for a scientific project aimed at integrating complementary theories and methods to 1) develop, validate, and apply cutting-edge tools and methods for minimally invasive, multi-dimensional, high-resolution measurement of behavior at the level of the organism, with synchronous capture of changes in the organisms social or physical environment; and 2) develop data science and computational methods that allow for integration of multidimensional behavioral and environmental datarepresenting multiple timescales, and that will establish of a conceptual and/or computational model of behavior as a complex dynamic system. Prospective projects are expected to be designed with the potential to integrate synchronously recorded neural data and/or inform existing models of neurobehavioral function, such as those developed with the support of the NIH BRAIN Initiative. The purpose of this R34 planning grant opportunity is to support planning and development of the research framework, design, and approach, including activities that will establish feasibility, validity, and/or other technically qualifying results that, if successful, would support a competitive application for a U01, or equivalent, NIH research award. This NOFO requires a Plan for Enhancing Diverse Perspectives (PEDP), which will be assessed as part of the scientific and technical peer review evaluation. Applications that fail to include a PEDP will be considered incomplete and will be withdrawn. Applicants are strongly encouraged to read the NOFO instructions carefully and view the available PEDP guidance material.

This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) solicits applications for one or more Data Coordinating Centers (DCCs) to support BRAIN CONNECTS, a networked consortium of Comprehensive Centers and Specialized Projects funded under RFA-NS-22-047, RFA-NS-22-048, and RFA-NS-22-049. The goals of these awards are to develop the research capacity and technical capabilities for comprehensive brain-wide connectivity mapping in mouse, human, and non-human primate (NHP). BRAIN CONNECTS projects will collect and process unprecedented volumes of anatomical data by scaling up cutting-edge acquisition modalities and analysis methods, to demonstrate the feasibility of collecting, reconstructing, analyzing, integrating, disseminating, and interpreting connectivity maps from entire brains. The resulting feasibility data from these awards are expected to inform NIH decisions on program continuation in a potential subsequent five-year funding period for production of brain-wide wiring diagrams. NIH expects to fund one or more BRAIN CONNECTS DCCs, which will collaborate with CONNECTS data generating projects to (1) coordinate activities of the BRAIN CONNECTS Network, (2) develop and harmonize common data processing pipelines, (3) integrate and disseminate data analytic tools and capabilities, (4) establish a unified knowledge base for connectivity data of diverse modalities, and (5) organize and implement outreach and engagement to the wider research community and the general public. Awards will be integrated into the BRAIN CONNECTS Network as a coordinated effort aimed at developing the ability to generate wiring diagrams spanning entire brains across multiple scales and species.

Reissue of RFA-MH-21-205 to comply with DMS Policy. This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), in support of the NIH Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, is one of several NOFOs aimed at supporting transformative discoveries that will lead to breakthroughs in understanding human brain function. Guided by the long-term scientific plan, BRAIN 2025: A Scientific Vision, this NOFO specifically seeks to support efforts addressing core ethical issues associated with research focused on the human brain and resulting from emerging technologies and advancements supported by the BRAIN Initiative. The hope is that efforts supported under this NOFO might be both complementary and integrative with the transformative, breakthrough neuroscience discoveries supported through the BRAIN Initiative.

The purpose of this Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) is to promote the availability of Mentored Clinician Scientist Research Career Development Awards (K08) applications in research areas covered by the NIH BRAIN Initiative. This program will provide support and protected time (3-5 years) for clinicians to develop new and/or expand their expertise in intracranial human neuroscience research. The goal of the program is to build an interdisciplinary and diverse research workforce dedicated to capitalizing on intracranial neural recording and/or stimulating technologies to answer high-impact questions in human neuroscience.

This is a reissue of RFA-MH-21-175 to comply with DMSP policy. The purpose of this Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative is to encourage applications that will develop and validate novel tools to facilitate the detailed analysis of complex circuits and provide insights into cellular interactions that underlie brain function. The new tools and technologies should inform and/or exploit cell-type and/or circuit-level specificity. Plans for validating the utility of the tool/technology will be an essential feature of a successful application. The development of new genetic and non-genetic tools for delivering genes, proteins and chemicals to cells of interest or approaches that are expected to target specific cell types and/or circuits in the nervous system with greater precision and sensitivity than currently established methods are encouraged. Tools that can be used in a number of species/model organisms rather than those restricted to a single species are highly desired. Applications that provide approaches that break through existing technical barriers to substantially improve current capabilities are highly encouraged.

Reissue of RFA-MH-22-115 to comply with DMSP policy. The purpose of this Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative is to encourage applications that will develop and validate novel tools to facilitate the detailed analysis and manipulation of complex circuits and provide insights into cellular interactions that underlie brain function. Critical advances in the treatment of brain disorders in human populations are hindered by our lack of ability to monitor and manipulate circuitry in safe, minimally-invasive ways. Clinical intervention with novel cell and circuit specific tools will require extensive focused research designed to remove barriers to delivery of gene therapies. In addition to identification and removal of barriers, the need to specifically target dysfunctional circuitry poses additional challenges. Neuroscience has experienced an impressive influx of exciting new research tools in the past decade, especially since the launch of the BRAIN Initiative. However, the majority of these cutting edge tools have been developed for use in model organisms, primarily rodents, fish and flies. These cutting edge tools, such as viral delivery of genetic constructs, are increasingly adaptable to large brains and more importantly are emerging as potential human therapeutic strategies for brain disorders. A pressing need to develop tools for use in large brains, more directly relevant to the human brain is the focus of this initiative. The new tools and technologies should inform and/or exploit cell-type and/or circuit-level specificity. Plans for validating the utility of the tool/technology will be an essential feature of a successful application.

Reissue of RFA-NS-22-028 to comply with DMSP - No new dates are being added. Reissue of:RFA-NS-18-029 and RFA-NS-20-029. This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is designed to support teams of investigators that seek to cross boundaries of interdisciplinary collaboration to elucidate the contributions of dynamic circuit activity to a specific behavioral or neural system. Applications are encouraged to propose adventurous and challenging goals that can only be tackled by a synergistic team-based approach and have the potential to be transformative and/or to enable significant advances. These studies at the exploratory stage are intended for the development of experimental capabilities and/or theoretical frameworks in preparation for a future competition for larger-scale or extended efforts, including the BRAIN TargetedBCP R01 or the multi-component, Team-Research BRAIN Circuit Programs (U19). The overall goal of this FOA is to enable a large-scale analysis of neural systems and circuits within the context and during the simultaneous measurement of an ethologically relevant behavior. Toward this end, teams are expected to assemble and leverage multi-disciplinary expertise, and to integrate experimental with computational and theoretical approaches. Teams are expected to bridge fields by incorporating rich information on cell-types, on circuit functionality and connectivity, in conjunction with sophisticated analyses of an ethologically relevant behavior of an organism or a well-defined neural system. Teams are also expected to aim for a mechanistic understanding of the circuits of the central nervous system (CNS) by applying cutting-edge methods such as those for large-scale recording, manipulation, and analysis of neural circuits across multiple regions of the CNS.

Reissue of RFA-MH-22-220 to comply with DMSP. This FOA supports the development of software to visualize and analyze the data as part of programs of building the informatics infrastructure for the BRAIN Initiative. Other informatics programs include developing data standards that are needed to describe the new experiments that are being created by or used in the BRAIN Initiative ( RFA-MH-19-146 ), and creating the data infrastructures that will house the data from multiple experimental groups ( RFA-MH-19-145 ). Each of the programs is aimed at building an infrastructure that is used by a particular sub-domain of experimentalists rather than building a single all-encompassing informatics infrastructure now. Building the infrastructure one experimental area at a time will ensure that the infrastructure is immediately useful to components of the research community. As our understanding of the brain improves, it may be possible to create linkages between these various sub-domain specific informatics programs. Investigators of the informatics programs should keep that goal in mind and build for the future even though the current efforts are more limited in scope.