Notices of Funding Opportunities

This R34 Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) seeks applications with limited scope 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/or 2) develop computational methods that allow for integration of multidimensional behavioral and environmental datarepresenting multiple timescales into a conceptual and/or computational model of behavior as a complex dynamic system, designed with the capacity 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 funding 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, R01 or equivalent NIH research award.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) intends to support a group of Specialized Collaboratories that will adopt scalable technology platforms and streamlined sampling strategies and assay cascade to create comprehensive and highly granular brain cell atlases in human, non-human primates, and mouse, in coordination and collaboration with other BICAN projects. In particular, the Specialized Collaboratories are expected to complement the Comprehensive Centers in BICAN with distinct capabilities, competencies, and research aims. The overarching goal of the BICAN is to build reference brain cell atlases that will be widely used throughout the research community, providing a molecular and anatomical foundational framework for the study of brain function and disorders.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) intends to support a group of large-scale Comprehensive Centers that will adopt scalable technology platforms and streamlined sampling strategies and assay cascade to create comprehensive and highly granular brain cell atlases of human and non-human primates with an emphasis on human. The Centers are expected to characterize all brain cell types (neurons, glia, and other non-neuronal cells) at high-resolution. The overarching goal of the BICAN is to build reference brain cell atlases that will be widely used throughout the research community, providing a molecular and anatomical foundational framework for the study of brain function and disorders.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) intends to support a Coordinating Unit for Biostatistics, Informatics, and Engagement (CUBIE) that will be composed of four components to establish respectively (1) a common sequencing data processing pipeline, (2) a common imaging data processing pipeline, (3) a comprehensive brain cell knowledge base, and (4) an engaging and outreach component to coordinate the research within and beyond BICAN. The overall goals of CUBIE are to (i) enable the exploration of large-scale brain cell atlas data and knowledge, and inspire research in brain function and disorders; and (ii) ensure research rigor and data reproducibility by making the data to be findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable, and the process transparent. An application is expected to propose only one of the above four respective components.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) supports the development and validation of next-generation tools, methods, and analytic approaches to precisely quantify behaviors and combine them with simultaneous recordings of brain activity in humans. Tools used for measuring and analyzing behavior should be multi-modal, with the appropriate accuracy, specificity, temporal resolution, and flexibility necessary for integration with existing tools used to measure and modulate the brain circuits that give rise to those behaviors.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) solicits applications for team-centric development and validation of innovative non-invasive imaging technologies that could have a transformative impact on the study of brain function/connectivity. Applications are expected to turn a novel concept into a functional prototype using this phased grant mechanism. The feasibility should be established by the end of its first phase and serve as a foundation for the transition to its second phase. Fully developing the technology into a functional prototype and validating it by in-vivo animal or human function/connectivity imaging are anticipated in the second phase. The research plan should provide a realistic timeline and tangible milestones to support the proposed development effort. Awards will be integrated into the BRAIN Non-Invasive Imaging Consortium, as a coordinated network on brain function/connectivity imaging.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) supports Comprehensive Centers to develop and test technologies that can be scaled to brain-wide atlases of human and non-human primate circuit connectivity. Centers will establish data collection, analysis, and dissemination pipelines to demonstrate the feasibility of mapping region-to-region connectivity with a minimum resolution of individual cells and/or axon fibers. They will demonstrate the significance of the approach within the context of a chosen CNS sub-volume, by testing specific hypotheses relating circuit structure to function. They will also incorporate toolsets and infrastructure for integrating separately collected data from smaller volumes, as well as from other data collection modalities, and for enabling the neuroscience community to interact with and mine the data for new research questions. Centers will be integrated into the BRAIN CONNECTS Network, consisting of projects from this FOA and its companion announcements, as a coordinated effort aimed at developing wiring diagrams that can span entire brains across multiple scales.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) supports Comprehensive Centers to develop and test technologies that can be scaled to brain-wide atlases of mouse circuit connectivity. Centers will establish data collection, analysis, and dissemination pipelines to demonstrate the feasibility of mapping cell-to-cell connectivity with a minimum resolution of synaptic connections. They will demonstrate the significance of the approach within the context of a chosen CNS sub-volume, by testing specific hypotheses relating circuit structure to function. They will also incorporate toolsets and infrastructure for integrating separately collected data from smaller volumes, as well as from other data collection modalities, and for enabling the neuroscience community to interact with and mine the data for new research questions. Centers will be integrated into the BRAIN CONNECTS Network, consisting of projects from this FOA and its companion announcements, as a coordinated effort aimed at developing wiring diagrams that can span entire brains across multiple scales.

The NIH Research Education Program (R25) supports research education activities in the mission areas of the NIH. The overarching goal of this Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative R25 program is to support educational activities that complement and/or enhance the training of a workforce to meet the nations biomedical, behavioral and clinical research needs in research areas relevant to the BRAIN Initiative. To accomplish the stated over-arching goal, this FOA will support creative educational activities with a primary focus on Courses for Skills Development and Research Experiences. The purpose of this FOA is to encourage applications for the continuation and/or expansion of ongoing and new research education programs that will significantly advance the educational goals of the BRAIN Initiative as described in BRAIN 2025: A Scientific Vision including neuroethics and opportunities to increase the workforce diversity in BRAIN Initiative research areas. Proposed programs are expected to offer hands-on research experiences, an in-depth conceptual understanding of the techniques and tools employed, and the knowledge to apply appropriate analytic approaches to the resulting data. Participants are limited to undergraduate, graduate/medical students, medical residents, postdoctoral scholars, and/or early-career faculty with an emphasis on diversity as defined by NIH (NOT-OD-20-031). Proposed programs will facilitate the development of a sophisticated cadre of future investigators with the knowledge and skills to apply BRAIN Initiative techniques and approaches and data resources (BRAIN cell census data https://bicon.org/data) to research questions about brain function and behavior. Programs appropriate for this FOA must include participants from a regionally/nationally recruited cohort.