This week, we will highlight BRAIN Initiative notices of funding opportunities (NOFOs) for fiscal year 2024. Today’s post features funding opportunities for administrative supplements to support research on bioethical issues and the BRAIN Initiative’s Systems Neuroscience.
Bioethics
Ethical considerations are intrinsic to the conduct of biomedical and health-related behavioral research and the translation of scientific and technological advances into practice. Research addressing bioethical issues can inform the conduct of biomedical, health-related, and behavioral science research and associated policies. The investment in and the integration of bioethics-related research and policy demonstrate NIH’s commitment to advancing ethical research which can facilitate public participation and trust in the research enterprise.
NOT-OD-24-031 Administrative Supplement for Research and Capacity Building Efforts Related to Bioethical Issues (Administrative Supplement, Clinical Trial Optional)
The NIH Office of Science Policy (OSP) within the Office of the Director (OD) announces the availability of administrative supplements to support:
- Research on bioethical issues to develop or support the development of an evidence base that may inform future policy directions, and/or
- Certain efforts to develop or augment bioethics research capacity.
Applicants may propose research to supplement parent awards focused on bioethics or biomedical and/or health-related behavioral research. The proposed bioethics question, issue, or topic must be clearly articulated. All applications must be within the scope of the parent award. Please read the full notice for more details. Applications are due April 1, 2024.
Please visit the BRAIN Initiative Neuroethics webpage for more details about the program.
Systems Neuroscience
The NIH BRAIN Initiative Understanding Circuits program encompasses a family of "Integrated and Quantitative Approaches to Understanding Circuits" NOFOs. These funding opportunities support projects at different stages: those at the exploratory phase (R34, eTeamBCP U01) vs those that have defined research deliverables (R01, U19). These NOFOs also welcome projects at different scales: those that are of a scale from an individual lab or small multi-PI team (R34, R01) vs those that are larger-scale team-based efforts (eTeamBCP U01, U19).
RFA-DA-24-042 BRAIN Initiative: Brain-Behavior Quantification and Synchronization Transformative and Integrative Models of Behavior at the Organismal Level (R34 Clinical Trial Optional)
This funding opportunity 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:
- 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 organism’s social or physical environment; and
- Develop data science and computational methods that allow for integration of multidimensional behavioral and environmental data representing multiple timescales, and that will establish a conceptual and/or computational model of behavior as a complex dynamic system.
Please read the NOFO for more details. Applications are due February 15, 2024.
RFA-DA-23-039 BRAIN Initiative: Theories, Models and Methods for Analysis of Complex Data from the Brain (R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
This funding opportunity solicits the development of theories, computational models, and analytical tools to derive understanding of brain function from complex neuroscience data. It is expected that the tools developed under this funding opportunity will be made widely available to the neuroscience research community for their use and modification. Please read the full NOFO for more details. Applications are due September 12, 2024.
RFA-NS-23-023 BRAIN Initiative: Targeted BRAIN Circuits Planning Projects—TargetedBCPP (R34 Clinical Trials Not Allowed)
This R34 funding opportunity solicits applications that offer a limited scope of aims and an approach that will establish feasibility, validity, or other technically qualifying results that, if successful, would support, enable, and/or lay the groundwork for a potential, subsequent Targeted Brain Circuits Projects—TargetedBCP R01, as described in the companion funding opportunity (RFA-NS-22-026). Applications should be exploratory research projects that use innovative, methodologically integrated approaches to understand how circuit activity gives rise to mental experience and behavior. Please read the full NOFO for more details. Applications are due June 28, 2024.
RFA-NS-23-024 BRAIN Initiative: Targeted BRAIN Circuits Projects—TargetedBCP (R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
This funding opportunity solicits applications for research projects that use innovative, methodologically integrated approaches to understand how circuit activity gives rise to mental experience and behavior. The goal is to support projects that can realize a meaningful outcome within five years. Applications should address circuit function in the context of specific neural systems such as sensation, perception, attention, reasoning, intention, decision-making, emotion, navigation, communication or homeostasis. Projects can use non-human and human species, and applications should explain how the selected species offers ideal conditions for revealing general principles about the circuit basis of a specific behavior. Please read the full NOFO for more details. Applications are due June 28, 2024.
RFA-NS-23-025 BRAIN Initiative: Exploratory Team-Research BRAIN Circuit Programs— eTeamBCP (U01 Clinical Trials Optional)
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. The overall goal of this funding opportunity 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. 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. Please read the full NOFO for more details. Applications are due June 14, 2024.
RFA-NS-22-040 BRAIN Initiative: Team-Research BRAIN Circuit Programs—TeamBCP (U19 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
RFA-NS-22-039 BRAIN Initiative: Team-Research BRAIN Circuit Programs—TeamBCP (U19 Basic Experimental Studies with Humans Required)
These funding opportunities will support integrated, interdisciplinary research teams that focus on examining dynamic circuit functions related to behavior using advanced and innovative technologies. Applications should incorporate overarching principles of circuit function in the context of specific neural systems underlying sensation, perception, emotion, motivation, cognition, decision-making, motor control, communication, or homeostasis. Programs should aim to cross boundaries of interdisciplinary collaboration and employ multi-component teams of research expertise including neurobiologists, statisticians, physicists, mathematicians, engineers, computer scientists, and data scientists, as appropriate. Please read the full NOFO for more details. Applications are due September 13, 2024.
Please visit the BRAIN Initiative Systems Neuroscience webpage for more details about the program.
As part of the NIH BRAIN Initiative’s efforts to promote more impactful science through the inclusion of diverse perspectives, many of these funding opportunities will require a Plan for Enhancing Diverse Perspectives as part of the application. Please visit the BRAIN Initiative’s funding opportunities webpage for more details on these and any additional opportunities that may arise.