Notices of Funding Opportunities

This funding opportunity announcement (FOA), in support of the NIH Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, aims to support early stage development of entirely new and novel noninvasive human brain imaging technologies and methods that will lead to transformative advances in our understanding of the human brain. The FOA solicits unusually bold and potentially transformative approaches and supports small-scale, proof-of-concept development based on exceptionally innovative, original and/or unconventional concepts.

The common marmoset has recently emerged as a promising model system to understand the primate brain. In particular, marmoset behavior is similar in many ways to human behavior and the technology for germ line transmission of exogenous genetic information is now possible. However, existing colonies and commercial sources are currently unable to provide sufficient marmosets for neuroscience research. This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) solicits applications to expand existing colonies of the common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) for neuroscience research in the United States. Awardees under this FOA are expected to expand their current marmoset colonies to provide healthy, well-characterized animals that will be made available to the neuroscience research community. Awardees 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 relatively small captive marmoset population and improve the genetic diversity of that population across multiple colonies.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) 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. The second major activity of the awardee will be to maintain a web site and an information support center to assist neuroscience researchers who are used to working with other animal models so that they may assess the utility of including marmosets in their scientific research program. In cases where the neuroscientists want to move forward, the Coordination Center will link the investigators to marmoset colonies that may be able to facilitate their science.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) encourages research grant applications directed toward developing next-generation human cell-derived assays that replicate complex nervous system architectures and physiology with improved fidelity over current capabilities. This includes technologies that do not rely on the use of human fetal tissue, as described in NOT-19-042. Supported projects will be expected to enable future studies of complex nervous system development, function and aging in healthy and disease states.

The BRAIN Initiative® and the neuroscience field as a whole is generating massive and diverse research data across different modalities, spatiotemporal scales and species in efforts to advance our understanding of the brain. The data types are being produced through development and application of innovative technologies in high-throughput -omics profiling, optical microscopy, electron microscopy, electrophysiological recording, macroscale neuroimaging, neuromodulation, and others. The BRAIN Initiative® has made significant investments in the development of an infrastructure to make data available to the research community in a useful way. This infrastructure includes data archives, data standards, and software for data integration, analysis and machine learning. This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) encourages secondary analysis of the large amounts of existing data related to The BRAIN Initiative®. The data do not need to be held in one of the funded BRAIN Initiative data archives, but the data must be held in a data archive that is readily accessible to the research community. Support will be provided for innovative analysis of relevant existing datasets using conventional or novel analytic methods, data science techniques, and machine learning approaches. Support may also be requested to prepare and submit existing data into any of The BRAIN Initiative® data archives. Investigators should not underestimate the time and effort that may be necessary to curate or harmonize data. Analyzed data, models and analytical tools generated under this FOA are expected to be deposited into an appropriate data archive. Since The BRAIN Initiative® data archives are mostly making the data available to the research community through cloud-based storage, depositing the analyzed data, models and tools are expected to enhance opportunities to create a data sandbox where investigators can easily compare the results of their analysis with those from other research groups.

The purpose of this Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative is to encourage applications that will develop and validate tools and resources to facilitate the detailed analysis of brain microconnectivity. Novel and augmented techniques are sought that will ultimately be broadly accessible to the neuroscience community for the interrogation of microconnectivity in healthy and diseased brains of model organisms and humans. Development of technologies that will significantly drive down the cost of connectomics would enable routine mapping of the microconnectivity on the same individuals that have been analyzed physiologically, or to compare normal and pathological tissues in substantial numbers of multiple individuals to assess variability. Advancements in both electron microscopy (EM) and super resolution light microscopic approaches are sought. Applications that propose to develop approaches that break through existing technical barriers to substantially improve current capabilities are highly encouraged. Proof-of-principle demonstrations and/or reference datasets enabling future development are welcome, as are improved approaches for automated segmentation and analysis strategies of neuronal structures in EM images.no

This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) supports efforts to disseminate resources and to integrate them into neuroscience research practice. Projects should be highly relevant to specific goals of the BRAIN Initiative, goals that are described in the planning document "BRAIN 2025: A Scientific Vision." They should engage in one or more of the following activities: distribution of tools and reagents; user training on the usage of new technologies or techniques; providing access to existing technology platforms and specialized facilities; minor improvements to increase the scale/efficiency of resource production and delivery; minor adaptations to meet the needs of a user community. Applications strictly focused on technology or software development, rather than dissemination of an existing resource, are not responsive to this FOA. Refinements to microscopes or tools necessary to customize them to the experimental needs of the end users is allowed. Projects should address compelling needs of neuroscience researchers working toward the goals of the BRAIN 2025 report that are otherwise unavailable or impractical in their current form.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) intends to support a group of Specialized Collaboratories that will adopt scalable technology platforms and streamlined workflows to accelerate progress towards establishing comprehensive molecular and anatomical reference cell atlases of human brain and/or non-human primate brains. A central goal of this FOA is to build a brain cell census resource that can be widely used throughout the research community.

This funding opportunity announcement (FOA), in support of the NIH Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, is one of several FOAs 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 FOA 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 FOA might be both complementary and integrative with the transformative, breakthrough neuroscience discoveries supported through The BRAIN Initiative®.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) intends to accelerate the integration and use of scalable technologies and tools to enhance brain cell census research, including the development of technology platforms and/or resources that will enable a swift and comprehensive survey of brain cell types and circuits. Applications are expected to address limitations and gaps of existing technologies/tools as a benchmark against which the improvements or competitive advantages of the proposed ones will be measured. The improvements include throughput, sensitivity, selectivity, scalability, spatiotemporal resolution and reproducibility in cell census analyses. The projects funded under this FOA will align with the overarching goals of The BRAIN Initiative® Cell Census Network (BICCN) and are expected to enable the generation of a substantial amount of cell census data using the proposed technologies or via collaboration with the BICCN.