On September 4-5, 2024, the National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NANDS) Council met in Bethesda, MD. The NANDS advises NINDS on policy and procedures affecting NINDS research programs, provides a second level of review for all grant and cooperative agreement applications considered by the Institute for funding, and serves as an important source of external input on a range of other topics important for the Institute.
Director's Messages
Researchers have mapped the first complete wiring diagram of neural connections in the brain, known as a connectome map, of the common fruit fly. The study details over 50 million connections between more than 130,000 neurons and is supported by the NIH Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative, or The BRAIN Initiative®.
September is Pain Awareness Month and affords us an opportunity to recognize the burden of suffering and disability that people experience due to chronic pain. Our commitment to listening to and incorporating the perspectives of people with lived experience communities as well as scientists and clinicians strengthens our ability to support meaningful research that can improve quality of life for the millions of people living with pain.
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or ALS, is a progressive and fatal neurodegenerative disease, affecting around 30,000 people in the United States. Through the Accelerating Access to Critical Therapies for ALS Act (ACT for ALS) and beyond, we at NINDS have joined the fight against the relentless ALS clock, and we are working every day to try to slow it down, and hopefully someday, eliminate it completely.
On July 23-24, NINDS will host its 2024 Nonprofit Forum, which brings together the neuroscience community, including nonprofit and patient advocacy organizations, professional societies focused on neurological disorders and neuroscience research, people with lived experience of neurological disorders, NINDS staff, researchers, academia, and other federal partners, to build connections, learn from one another, and continue to make progress together.
On June 17-18, NIH will host the 10th Annual BRAIN Initiative Conference. This year’s conference is an opportunity to reflect on advances made by a decade of BRAIN-funded neuroscience and neurotechnology research and to look toward the future.
Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is a chronic disease that impacts millions of people worldwide. The recently released ME/CFS Research Roadmap, along with new research findings from NINDS- and NIH-funded studies, should move us closer to understanding ME/CFS and identifying treatments to help those affected by the disease.
May is National Stroke Awareness month. This month, I want to highlight recent stroke research and some of the many ways we have been working to promote stroke awareness, including our new NINDS stroke resource hub, which brings all of our public education resources and information about stroke to one place.
On March 23, Congress passed and the President signed the final set of spending bills for fiscal year (FY) 2024. The total appropriation for NINDS is $2,689,925,000 (including funds from the 21st Century Cures Act), a decrease of 4.4% compared to FY 2023.
April is Parkinson’s Disease Awareness month. NINDS is the primary NIH institute for Parkinson’s disease research, and we are working to catalyze progress through basic, translational, and clinical research programs aiming to better understand, diagnose, and treat Parkinson’s disease.