The BRAIN Blog

Congress recently passed a budget bill that promises increased funding above fiscal year 2017 to NIH, including significant increases for the BRAIN Initiative. The legislation delivers further to support NIH’s mission of conducting biomedical research that will save lives, lead to new drug and device development, reduce health care costs, and improve the lives of all Americans.

Miniaturized carbon fiber electrode arrays for intra-nerve recording and stimulation… Reliable measurement and imaging of brain bioenergetics… Emerging medical imaging tool with superior contrast and sensitivity… Improved method for synaptic neural circuit tracing…

Advances in electrode array fabrication improve longevity of nervous system implants

New BRAIN Initiative K99/R00 Career Transition award to promote diversity, women, and individuals from diverse backgrounds.

In a recent interagency program solicitation, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced funding opportunities for the Smart and Connected Health (SCH) program. Related to the SCH program, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) is soliciting applications directed at the treatment of pain.

The meeting will convene BRAIN Initiative awardees, staff, and leadership from contributing federal agencies, plus representatives and investigators from participating non-federal organizations, and members of the media, public, and Congress. This open meeting provides a forum for discussing exciting scientific developments and potential new directions, and to identify areas for collaboration and research coordination.

Behavioral modeling and optogenetics elucidate mechanisms of subjective, history-dependent decision bias… Advanced transgenic approach improves light-based study of neuronal circuit dynamics… Current state of computational methods in single-cell functional genomics… Sleep promotes communication between association cortices and hippocampus…

Experimentally manipulating neural activity in behaving mice implicates the posterior parietal cortex in history-based decision bias

Requests for Applications (RFAs) for the NIH BRAIN Initiative® continue to address critical components of the BRAIN 2025 Report, including novel tools to explore brain microconnectivity and non-neuronal cells, technology integration and dissemination, neuroethics, non-invasive human brain imaging, invasive human neuroscience, and team-based research on neural systems and circuits.

Enhancement of a new DNA-based bioimaging technique… Method allowing near-simultaneous imaging of several thousand neurons in awake behaving mice… Imaging method to overcome biological tissue refractive index inhomogeneity increases large-field-of-view imaging depth… Open-source software package for working with microscopy images boosts high-throughput, single-cell analysis …

Improved DNA conjugation method enhances the achievable labeling density and spatial accuracy of highly multiplexed Exchange-PAINT imaging

Intracranial electrical recordings and neuro-stimulation of neurosurgical patients have made fundamental contributions to our understanding of vision, speech, decision making, memory, and sensorimotor processing. The use of these methods has burgeoned over the last decade due to technological advances and an increase in the number of patients undergoing neurosurgery for different neurological disorders.

Method to overcome light scatter in optical imaging distinguishes moving objects with high fidelity… Novel analysis method improves accuracy of neural network models… Improved imaging technique reveals synaptic transmission at quantal resolution in fruit fly larvae

Phase retrieval methods in optical imaging allow for successful imaging of moving targets through scattered media