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The purpose of the NINDS Research Program Award (RPA) is to provide longer-term support, and increased freedom and flexibility, to Program Directors (PDs)/Principal Investigators (PIs), to allow them to redirect their time away from the administrative burden of writing and managing multiple grant applications and towards engaging in the lab. This RPA affords investigators at most career stages the opportunity to advance their long-term research goals, rigorously explore exciting research opportunities, and mentor students and postdoctorates, which support and align with the mission of NINDS. RPAs will support the overall research programs of NINDS-funded investigators for up to 8 years, at a level commensurate with a PD/PIs recent NINDS support (Part 2, Section II). This funding stability will provide eligible investigators increased security, allowing them to undertake research projects that require a longer timeframe or to embark upon research that breaks new ground. Research activities outside of the NINDS mission, or traditionally supported by another NIH Institute or Center, will not be considered through this program. Benefits of the RPA include: A more stable funding environment, facilitating the pursuit of longer-term research goals; Flexible funding, enabling investigators to pursue research opportunities as they arise, not tied to specific aims; Reduced time spent writing grant applications and managing multiple grant awards, allowing investigators to spend more time conducting and overseeing research; More time for PDs/PIs to mentor and foster a diverse workforce in their laboratories. NINDS is committed to enhancing the diversity and inclusiveness of the neuroscience workforce. A diverse NIH-supported scientific workforce, including individuals from underrepresented groups, fosters scientific innovation, enhances global competitiveness, contributes to robust learning environments, and improves the quality of the research. See the Notice of NIH

The purpose of this funding opportunity is to provide an avenue for researchers to pursue funding to conduct research addressing these emerging and existing COVID-related issues. The goal of this NOSI is to not replace or compete with the various COVID-related funding opportunities currently available, but rather, to complement them by offering a funding opportunity to address key issues not currently covered by available COVID-related funding announcements among pregnant and lactating people, infants, children and adolescents in a most timely manner. Research projects addressing issues that are the focus of currently available or future COVID funding opportunity announcements will be encouraged to submit to those announcements. Also, the sharing of COVID related data and resources and effective communication of results are a high priority of the NIH. Applicants responding to this NOSI are strongly encouraged to describe plans for rapid sharing of data and results as well as innovative data analytics approaches.

This is a reissue of RFA-MH-21-135. This FOA supports the development of software to visualize and analyze the data as part of programs of building the informatics infrastructure for the BRAIN Initiative. Other informatics programs include developing data standards that are needed to describe the new experiments that are being created by or used in the BRAIN Initiative ( RFA-MH-19-146 ), and creating the data infrastructures that will house the data from multiple experimental groups ( RFA-MH-19-145 ). Each of the programs is aimed at building an infrastructure that is used by a particular sub-domain of experimentalists rather than building a single all-encompassing informatics infrastructure now. Building the infrastructure one experimental area at a time will ensure that the infrastructure is immediately useful to components of the research community. As our understanding of the brain improves, it may be possible to create linkages between these various sub-domain specific informatics programs. Investigators of the informatics programs should keep that goal in mind and build for the future even though the current efforts are more limited in scope.

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to encourage grant applications for investigator-initiated prospective observational comparative effectiveness research (CER) to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). The study must address questions within the mission and research interests of the NINDS and may evaluate preventive strategies, diagnostic approaches, or interventions including drugs, biologics, and devices, or surgical, behavioral, and rehabilitation therapies. Information about the mission and research interests of the NINDS can be found at the NINDS website (https://www.ninds.nih.gov/). Studies proposed should provide a cost-effective means of collecting data with a meaningful bearing on current clinical practice. Awards made under this FOA will initially support a milestone-driven planning phase (UG3) for up to 2 years, with possible transition to a observational study phase of up to five years (UH3). Only UG3 projects that have met the scientific milestones and feasibility requirements may transition to the UH3 phase. The UG3/UH3 application must be submitted as a single application, following the instructions described in this FOA. The UG3 phase for observational studies will permit both scientific and operational planning activities. Scientific planning activities include small-scale data collection to assess the feasibility and/or acceptability of data collection, storage, and planned analyses. Operational planning activities include, at a minimum, development of recruitment and retention strategies, case report forms, data management system and other tools for data and quality management. The UH3 phase of the award will support the conduct of investigator-initiated observational study.

This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is a reissue due to an omission of TRAINING RECORD review questions in Section V. This FOA encourages applications for the Chronic, Non-Communicable Diseases and Disorders Across the Lifespan: Fogarty International Research Training Award (NCD-LIFESPAN) D43 program for institutional research training programs in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs, as defined by the World Bank classification system). Applications may be for collaborations between institutions in the U.S and an eligible LMIC or may involve just LMIC institutions if there is a previous track record of externally funded research and/or research training programs by the lead LMIC institution. The proposed institutional research training program is expected to sustainably strengthen the NCD research capacity of the LMIC institutions, and to train in-country experts to develop and conduct research on NCDs across the lifespan, with the long-range goal of developing and implementing evidence-based interventions relevant to their countries. The main focus of research training covered in the application must be relevant to the interests of at least one of the participating NIH ICs as stated by each in this FOA. Other NCD topics may be included as secondary and complementary focus areas. This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) allows support of trainees as the lead investigator of an independent clinical trial; or a separate ancillary study to an existing trial; or to gain research experience in a clinical trial led by another investigator, as part of their research and career development.

Reissue of:RFA-NS-18-029 and RFA-NS-20-029. This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is designed to support teams of investigators that seek to cross boundaries of interdisciplinary collaboration to elucidate the contributions of dynamic circuit activity to a specific behavioral or neural system. 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. These studies at the exploratory stage are intended for the development of experimental capabilities and/or theoretical frameworks in preparation for a future competition for larger-scale or extended efforts, including the BRAIN TargetedBCP R01 or the multi-component, Team-Research BRAIN Circuit Programs (U19).The overall goal of this FOA 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. Toward this end, teams are expected to assemble and leverage multi-disciplinary expertise, and to integrate experimental with computational and theoretical approaches. Teams are expected to bridge fields by incorporating rich information on cell-types, on circuit functionality and connectivity, in conjunction with sophisticated analyses of an ethologically relevant behavior of an organism or a well-defined neural system. 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.

The overarching purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to promote the discovery and/or early evaluation of strong candidate biomarkers and biomarker signatures that can be used as tools to facilitate the clinical development of neurotherapeutics and their use in clinical practice. Specifically, the focus of this FOA is on the identification and initial biological, analytical and clinical evaluation of biomarkers and biomarker signatures for neurological and neuromuscular disorders. Although research supported by this FOA can include animal studies, it must also include preliminary human evaluation using carefully standardized human samples or datasets. The goal of this initiative is to deliver candidate biomarkers or biomarker signatures that are ready for definitive analytical and clinical validation studies.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) supports Specialized Projects to develop current or emerging technologies to generate comprehensive atlases of brain connectivity, with an emphasis on human, non-human primate (NHP), and mouse. Projects validating approaches using other species are also permitted if well justified. Applications may address any aspects of the data collection, analysis, and dissemination pipelines, to enable faster and more cost-effective generation and interpretation of brain-wide wiring diagrams. Projects will offer distinct capabilities and competencies aimed at developing and optimizing current technologies or entirely new and potentially risky approaches. They will be integrated into the BRAIN CONNECTS Network, consisting of other Specialized Projects from this FOA, and Comprehensive Centers from its companion announcements, as a coordinated effort aimed at developing wiring diagrams that can span entire brains across multiple scales.

(Reissue of RFA-NS-18-030) This FOA 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 5 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 should link theory and data analysis to experimental design and should produce predictive models as deliverables. Projects should aim to improve the understanding of circuits of the central nervous system by systematically controlling stimuli and/or behavior while actively recording and/or manipulating dynamic patterns of neural activity. 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.

(Reissue of RFA-NS-18-014 and RFA-NS-21-014) This R34 FOA 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 FOA (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.