The BRAIN Blog

Dr. Jeff Lichtman and colleagues published a paper in Cell outlining a series of techniques for sectioning, reconstructing, and analyzing a discrete volume of mouse brain tissue with nanometer resolution. Advancing the automated collection and processing of cortical tissue at the nanometer scale, this project stems from a collaborative, six-year effort of multiple researchers currently supported by The BRAIN Initiative®.

NIH BRAIN Initiative grantee Lihong Wang receives award for the development of innovative brain imaging technology. 

Lihong Wang, biomedical engineer at Washington University in St. Louis and NIH BRAIN Initiative grantee, was awarded the 2015 Britton Chance Biomedical Optics Award earlier this year by SPIE (the international society for optics and photonics) for his pioneering work towards the development and application of new imaging techniques.

In separate publications, co-chair of the Advisory Committee to the NIH Director for The BRAIN Initiative^SM, Dr. Cori Bargmann, and the current Society for Neuroscience president, Dr. Steve Hyman, outline how projects funded through the Initiative are already paying off only two years following the bold cross-disciplinary effort’s launch.

National Institute of Mental Health Director and co-chair of NIH BRAIN Initiative
Multi-Council Working Group, reviews several scientific advancements stemming from the first year NIH-funded projects.

Data science – the extraction of knowledge from large volumes of unstructured data – has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of health and disease. Yet biomedical science faces a shortage of skilled researchers who have facility with computational ideas and paradigms.

Cal-BRAIN (the California Blueprint for Research to Advance Innovations in Neuroscience) has announced grantees for its inaugural round of funding.

Cal-BRAIN (the California Blueprint for Research to Advance Innovations in Neuroscience) has selected 16 projects to receive inaugural seed grant awards of $120,000 each.

BRAIN Initiative grantee Dr. Carlos Brody co-authored a Nature paper that explores how distinct neural circuits contribute to the brain’s process of making decisions based on weighing evidence.

The NIH Blueprint seeks feedback from the scientific community about how to best continue to support neuroscience research over the next 10 years.

BRAIN Initiative awardee Dr. Bryan Roth recently co-authored a paper in Neuron unveiling the second generation of DREADDs (Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs), tools that will allow researchers to turn neuronal activity on and off in multiple cell types simultaneously.