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This funding opportunity supports transformative, mechanistic research aimed at understanding how the human brain functions. Applications should seek to reveal how the dynamic activity of individual neurons and ensembles of neurons within spatially organized brain networks gives rise to internal experiences, such as sensations, perceptions, emotions, thoughts, and memories, as well as to observable motor and social behaviors. To achieve fundamental mechanistic insights into human brain function, proposed studies are expected to leverage opportunities made possible by invasive surgical procedures in humans, such as intracranial recording or stimulation. These investigations may be enhanced by incorporating complementary experimental models or systems that provide access to knowledge, techniques, or resources not otherwise available in human neuroscience research. Such integration is encouraged to strengthen the mechanistic understanding of human brain function and to connect discoveries across species and biological scales. This program builds on cutting-edge advances enabled by the BRAIN Initiative and the broader neuroscience community.Projects supported through this opportunity are expected to produce transformative outcomes by the end of the funding period. Approaches should be rigorous, mechanistic, and innovative by (1) maximizing opportunities to conduct innovative in vivo human neuroscience research made available by direct access to the human brain from invasive surgical procedures, (2) employing approaches guided by specified theoretical constructs and/or quantitative, mechanistic models.Funded investigators will join a consortium working group, coordinated by the NIH, to identify consensus standards of practice, including neuroethical considerations, to collect and provide data for ancillary studies, and to aggregate and standardize data for dissemination among the wider scientific community.

The National Institutes of Health seek to advance their mission by providing the scientific community with the opportunity to request access to biospecimens from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive DevelopmentSM (ABCD) Study, the HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study, and the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study to conduct research consistent with the respective study objectives that will maximize the scientific utility of these limited samples. Applications should expand the knowledge gained from these studies and advance our understanding of the multiple genetic and environmental factors, such as exposure to substances, that affect health and disease over the course of a lifetime.

The purpose of this notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) is to support research that advances understanding of the natural history of radiation or chemical exposures; develops relevant injury models; identifies and validates diagnostic tools, biomarkers, or triage technologies; and supports the development of effective medical countermeasures (MCMs) to mitigate or treat acute and/or delayed injuries resulting from radiological/nuclear or chemical public health emergencies.

This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) supports transdisciplinary research teams seeking to develop mechanistic, biologically grounded explanations of how neural circuits and their cellular building blocks give rise to central nervous system (CNS) function. Teams must integrate expertise spanning molecular and cellular through systems neuroscience, with strong collaboration between experimental and computational investigators, to bridge cells, circuits, and behavior in a unified framework that yields mechanistic insight.Applications must explicitly connect three core elements: (1) characterization of circuit components (e.g., cell types and/or connectivity); (2) measurement of dynamic circuit activity, incorporating in vivo CNS recordings at cellular and sub-second temporal resolution; and (3) analyses of a tractable behavior or functional output.To address this significant challenge in neuroscience, proposed studies are expected to leverage innovative conceptual or theoretical frameworks, predictive models, and/or cutting-edge approaches that unify these three levels of analysis and bridge experimental and computational components.Recipients are expected to participate in BRAIN consortia activities to identify standards of practice towards multi-level integration.

This funding announcement, issued by the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative, seeks transformative, cutting-edge, and innovative research that embraces new technologies, ideas, and approaches to understand brain circuit function and contributions to behavior. It is a component of the BRAIN Initiative Connectivity Across Scales (BRAIN CONNECTS) Program, which aims to lay the scientific foundation for the next generation of neural circuit-based approaches for preventing and treating devastating brain disorders.This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) 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 using other species are also permitted, if their use is well justified and the goal is to test and validate approaches that can be generalized across species. Applications may address any aspect(s) of brain connectivity and associated data pipelines, including data collection, reconstruction, analysis, integration, dissemination, and interpretation, to enable faster, more precise, and more cost-effective generation and interpretation of brain-wide wiring diagrams. Funded projects will be integrated into the BRAIN CONNECTS Network consisting of projects funded under this and preceding BRAIN CONNECTS NOFOs, as a coordinated effort aimed at developing the capabilities to generate wiring diagrams that can span entire brains across multiple scales.

Invasive surgical procedures in humans offer the unique opportunity to intracranially record and stimulate neuronal activity within precisely localized brain structures, enabling high-impact human neuroscience investigations. This NOFO seeks exploratory research projects, from newly formed or established multi-disciplinary teams, to understand how dynamic activity of single cells and ensembles of neurons in spatially organized networks gives rise to the internal states we experience as sensations, perceptions, emotions, thoughts, and memories, and to observable motor and social behaviors. The research should be proposed as exploratory research and planning activities to establish feasibility and early-stage development that, if successful, would support, enable, and/or lay the groundwork for a potential, subsequent research project grant applications using invasive neural recording and stimulation technologies in the human brain. Projects should maximize opportunities to conduct innovative in vivo human neuroscience research made available by direct access to the brain from invasive surgical procedures. Projects should employ approaches guided by specified theoretical constructs and by quantitative, mechanistic models where appropriate. Recipients will join a consortium working group, coordinated by the NIH, to identify consensus standards of practice, including neuroethical considerations, to collect and provide data for ancillary studies, and to aggregate and standardize data for dissemination among the wider scientific community.

This notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) supports efforts to disseminate resources for integration into neuroscience research practice. The resource(s) should be relevant to the goals of the BRAIN Initiative as outlined in the "BRAIN 2025: A Scientific Vision" and "The BRAIN Initiative 2.0: From Cells to Circuits, Toward Cures" and shared broadly to the neuroscience community. The resource(s) should address compelling needs of neuroscience researchers that are otherwise unavailable or impractical in their current form. Activities must include dissemination of an existing resource, and may include 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/or specialized facilities; minor improvements to increase the scale/efficiency of resource production and delivery; minor adaptations to meet the needs of a user community.

The Theories, Models and Methods (TMM) initiative will support the development of computational tools for understanding dynamic brain circuits that are made broadly accessible to the greater research community. This program supports applications focused on tool building and dissemination in the domain of theories about neural circuit mechanisms, models of circuit structure and function, and/or computational methods of analysis spanning across scales from neurons to behavior. The development of novel theories, computational models and methods for understanding brain function will help characterize fundamental principles of brain function and organization, characterize cellular and circuit-level neural computations over time in different regions, and understand how interactions of multiple brain circuits enable flexible behaviors and contribute to brain-wide neural dynamics. These tools will be critical for developing treatments such as closed loop systems for brain disorders including Parkinsons disease and major depressive disorder.

The purpose of this Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative is to encourage applications that will develop and validate novel tools to facilitate the detailed analysis of complex circuits and provide insights into cellular interactions that underlie brain function. The new tools and technologies should inform and/or exploit cell-type and/or circuit-level specificity. Plans for validating the utility of the tool/technology will be an essential feature of a successful application. The development of new genetic and non-genetic tools for delivering genes, proteins and chemicals to cells of interest or approaches that are expected to target specific cell types and/or circuits in the nervous system with greater precision and sensitivity than currently established methods are encouraged. Tools that can be used in a number of species/model organisms rather than those restricted to a single species are highly desired. Applications that provide approaches that break through existing technical barriers to substantially improve current capabilities are highly encouraged.

This NOFO solicits applications for next generation sensor and bioelectronic device development that will synchronize with brain recordings. The sensor and neural recording data will be used to generate new computational models of behavior in human and animal models. There has been a lack of quantitative approaches and models to understand the complexity of human and animal behavior in naturalistic settings. This NOFO focuses on the development of next generation sensors to acquire data and synchronize it with simultaneous brain recordings to build computational models.