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The purpose of this Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative funding opportunity announcement is to encourage applications that will develop and validate novel tools to facilitate the detailed analysis and manipulation of complex circuits in large brains. Critical advances in the treatment of brain disorders in human populations are hindered by our lack of ability to monitor and manipulate circuitry in safe, minimally-invasive ways. Clinical intervention with novel cell and circuit specific tools will require extensive focused research designed to remove barriers to delivery of gene therapies. In addition to identification and removal of barriers, the need to specifically target dysfunctional circuitry poses additional challenges. Neuroscience has experienced an impressive influx of exciting new research tools in the past decade, especially since the launch of the BRAIN Initiative. However, the majority of these cutting-edge tools have been developed for use in model organisms, primarily rodents, fish and flies. These cutting-edge tools, such as viral delivery of genetic constructs, are increasingly adaptable to larger mammalian brains and more importantly are emerging as potential human therapeutic strategies for brain disorders. A pressing need to develop tools for use in large brains or those that are more directly relevant to the human brain is the focus of this initiative. The initiative will support initial proof of principle studies aimed at demonstrating the feasibility of this approach in humans and other mammalian species (non-human primate [NHP]/sheep/pigs).

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) intends to support a Brain Cell Data Center (BCDC) that will work with other BICCN Centers and interested researchers to establish a web-accessible information system to capture, store, analyze, curate, and display all data and metadata on brain cell types, and their connectivity. The BCDC is expected to: (1) lead the effort to establish spatial and semantic standards for managing heterogeneous brain cell census data types and information; (2) lead the effort to collect and register multimodal brain cell census data to common brain coordinate systems; (3) generate searchable 2D and 3D digital brain atlases for cell census data; and (4) generate a unified and comprehensive brain cell knowledge base that integrates all existing brain cell census data and information across diverse repositories.  A central goal of this and the three companion FOAs is to build a brain cell census resource that can be widely used throughout the research community.

This funding opportunity announcement (FOA), in support of the NIH Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, is one of several FOAs aimed at supporting transformative discoveries that will lead to breakthroughs in understanding human brain function. Guided by the long-term scientific plan, "BRAIN 2025: A Scientific Vision," this FOA specifically seeks to support efforts addressing core ethical issues associated with research focused on the human brain and resulting from emerging technologies and advancements supported by the BRAIN Initiative. Efforts supported under this FOA are intended to be both complementary and integrative with the transformative, breakthrough neuroscience discoveries supported through the BRAIN Initiative.

The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative is aimed at revolutionizing neuroscience through development and application of innovative technologies to map neural circuits, monitor and modulate their activity, and understand how they contribute to thoughts, sensations, emotions and behavior. NIH has issued a variety of Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) that will support projects that apply technologies to understand neural circuit function in the context of specific circuits, resulting in a diverse portfolio of research into the fundamental biology of nervous system function. The purpose of this announcement is to notify the research community that NIH welcomes BRAIN Initiative applications targeting central nervous system nociceptive and pain circuits, as appropriate to the goals and requirements of specific BRAIN Initiative FOAs. Pain conditions represent an important public health problem and NIH continues to support research into pain pathologies through normal Institute and Center appropriations. However, pain and nociception are also components of normal nervous system function, and the BRAIN Initiative is committed to understanding pain circuits along with brain circuits underlying other sensory, motor, cognitive and emotional functions. It is expected that the unique opportunities of the BRAIN Initiative will enable production of detailed maps of pain circuits, and the adoption of powerful new tools for monitoring and modulating pain circuit activity, leading to significant advances in the understanding of pain and nociception. For a list of past and open BRAIN Initiative FOAs, see https://braininitiative.nih.gov/funding/.

This funding opportunity announcement (FOA), in support of the NIH Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, is one of several FOAs aimed at supporting transformative discoveries that will lead to breakthroughs in understanding human brain function. Guided by the long-term scientific plan, BRAIN 2025: A Scientific Vision, this FOA specifically seeks to support efforts addressing core ethical issues associated with research focused on the human brain and resulting from emerging technologies and advancements supported by the BRAIN Initiative. The hope is that efforts supported under this FOA might be both complementary and integrative with the transformative, breakthrough neuroscience discoveries supported through the BRAIN Initiative.

This funding opportunity announcement, in support of the NIH Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative aims to pilot classification strategies to generate a systematic inventory/cell census of cell types in the brain. Pilot projects are sought that would 1) provide cell census data in the whole brain, a brain region, or a significant functional circuit in the vertebrate nervous system; 2) integrate molecular identity of cell types with connectivity, morphology, and location; 3) apply statistical methods for creating a taxonomy of cell types based on molecular identity and connectivity; 4) provide realistic estimates on the number/percentage of defined cell types in specific region(s) and/or circuit(s); and 5) provide a basis to map cell types based on molecular identity and connectivity onto a reference brain atlas. These pilot projects and methodologies should be designed to demonstrate their utility and scalability to ultimately complete a comprehensive cell census of the human brain in the future.

This funding opportunity announcement (FOA), in support of the NIH Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, is one of several FOAs aimed at supporting transformative discoveries that will lead to breakthroughs in understanding human brain function. Guided by the long-term scientific plan, "BRAIN 2025: A Scientific Vision," this FOA specifically seeks to support efforts addressing core ethical issues associated with research focused on the human brain and resulting from emerging technologies and advancements supported by the BRAIN Initiative. The hope is that efforts supported under this FOA might be both complementary and integrative with the transformative, breakthrough neuroscience discoveries supported through the BRAIN Initiative.

This funding opportunity announcement (FOA), in support of the NIH Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, is one of several FOAs aimed at supporting transformative discoveries that will lead to breakthroughs in understanding human brain function. Guided by the long-term scientific plan, BRAIN 2025: A Scientific Vision, this FOA specifically seeks to support efforts addressing core ethical issues associated with research focused on the human brain and resulting from emerging technologies and advancements supported by the BRAIN Initiative. The hope is that efforts supported under this FOA might be both complementary and integrative with the transformative, breakthrough neuroscience discoveries supported through the BRAIN Initiative.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) issued by the National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse (NIAAA), National Institutes of Health, is a limited competition FOA encouraging a resource project (R28) application from a center currently supported under an existing grant, entitled Brain Tissue Resource Center for Alcohol Research to (i) develop a bank of brain tissues (fresh-frozen and formalin-fixed) from alcoholic and control cases with confirmed clinical and pathological diagnoses, (ii) develop and promote a prospective brain donor program in Australia (Using our Brains) to enhance the brain bank, (iii) establish an associated DNA (blood) bank from the brain donor group, and (iv) invite research groups with an interest in alcohol-related brain damage to submit applications for studies using these tissues.

The BRAIN Initiative: The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative® is aimed at revolutionizing our understanding of the human brain. By accelerating the development and application of innovative technologies, researchers will be able to produce a new dynamic picture of the brain that, for the first time, will show how individual cells and complex neural circuits interact in both time and space. It is expected that the application of these new tools and technologies will ultimately lead to new ways to treat and prevent brain disorders.

The BRAIN Initiative and the neuroscience field as a whole are generating massive and diverse research data across different modalities, spatiotemporal scales and species in efforts to advance our understanding of the brain. The data types are being produced through development and application of innovative technologies in high-throughput -omics profiling, optical microscopy, electron microscopy, electrophysiological recording, macroscale neuroimaging, neuromodulation, and others. The BRAIN Initiative has made significant investments in the development of an infrastructure to make data available to the research community in a useful way. This infrastructure includes data archives, data standards, and software for data integration, analysis and machine learning. This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) encourages secondary analysis of the large amounts of existing data related to the BRAIN Initiative. The data do not need to be held in one of the funded BRAIN Initiative data archives, but the data must be held in a data archive that is readily accessible to the research community. Support will be provided for innovative analysis of relevant existing datasets using conventional or novel analytic methods, data science techniques, and machine learning approaches. Support may also be requested to prepare and submit existing data into any of the BRAIN Initiative data archives. Investigators should not underestimate the time and effort that may be necessary to curate or harmonize data.

Understanding how behavior emerges from the dynamic patterns of electrical and chemical activity of brain circuits is universally recognized as one of the great, unsolved mysteries of science. Advances in recent decades have elucidated how individual elements of the nervous system and brain relate to specific behaviors and cognitive processes. However, there remains much to discover to attain a comprehensive understanding of how the healthy brain functions, specifically, the general principles underlying how cognition and behavior relate to the brain's structural organization and dynamic activities, how the brain interacts with its environment, and how brains maintain their functionality over time. Achieving an understanding of brain structure and function that spans levels of organization, spatial and temporal scales, and the diversity of species requires an international,transdisciplinary collaborative effort to not only integrate discipline-specific ideas andapproaches but also extend them to stimulate new discoveries, and innovativeconcepts, theories, and methodologies. The objective of this phase of the NeuroNex Program is the establishment of distributed, international research networks that build on existing globalinvestments in neurotechnologiesto address overarching questions in neuroscience. The creation of such global research networks of excellence will foster international cooperation by seeding close interactions between a wide array of organizations across the world, as well as creating links and articulating alliances between multiple recently launched international brain projects.

The Brain Tumor Funders' Collaborative works to identify potential therapies for patients with primary human brain tumors, with the goal of increasing progression-free patient survival and improving quality of life for patients affected by a primary brain tumor. To that end, BTFC has issued a Request for Proposals for research on the role of the neuro-immune system in the origin and progression of immune responses in primary human brain tumors with the hope of developing immunotherapies for treatment of these tumors in patients. Priority will be given to studies on immune responses in primary brain tumors in pediatric and/or adult human patients. The program, which will provide grants of up to $250,000 per year over three years, will support a small number of multidisciplinary team-based projects. Teams should represent the requisite skills needed to carry out the proposed research, including clinical oncology, tumor biology, neuro-immunology, computational modelling, and data science. Other areas of immunotherapy research may also be entertained, including radiation-induced brain tumors in survivors of childhood cancers who received cranio-spinal radiation for their original cancer (leukemias or medulloblastoma).

The Brain Tumor Funders' Collaborative works to identify potential therapies for patients with primary human brain tumors, with the goal of increasing progression-free patient survival and improving quality of life for patients affected by a primary brain tumor. To that end, BTFC has issued a Request for Proposals for research on the role of the neuro-immune system in the origin and progression of immune responses in primary human brain tumors with the hope of developing immunotherapies for treatment of these tumors in patients. Priority will be given to studies on immune responses in primary brain tumors in pediatric and/or adult human patients. The program, which will provide grants of up to $250,000 per year over three years, will support a small number of multidisciplinary team-based projects. Teams should represent the requisite skills needed to carry out the proposed research, including clinical oncology, tumor biology, neuro-immunology, computational modelling, and data science. Other areas of immunotherapy research may also be entertained, including radiation-induced brain tumors in survivors of childhood cancers who received cranio-spinal radiation for their original cancer (leukemias or medulloblastoma).

The NINDS, with other NIH Institutes and Centers participating in the BRAIN Initiative, intends to publish "BRAIN Initiative Advanced Postdoctoral Career Transition Award to Promote Diversity (K99/R00)." The program is designed to increase biomedical research workforce diversity and foster a strong cohort of new, highly skilled and well trained, NIH-supported, independent investigators from underrepresented groups working in research areas supported by the BRAIN Initiative, as highlighted in BRAIN 2025: A Scientific Vision. It is designed to facilitate a timely transition of outstanding postdoctoral researchers with a research and/or clinical doctorate degree from mentored, postdoctoral research positions to independent, tenure-track or equivalent faculty positions. This Notice is being provided to allow potential applicants sufficient time to develop meaningful mentoring teams and responsive projects. The FOA is expected to be published in April 2018 with an expected application due date in June 2018. This FOA will utilize the K99/R00 funding activity. Details of the planned FOA are provided below. Research Initiative Details The BRAIN Initiative K99/R00 award is intended for women and members of underrepresented groups who are working in research areas supported by the BRAIN Initiative, who have no more than five years of postdoctoral research experience, and who require at least 12 months of mentored research training and career development (K99 phase) before transitioning to the independent research (R00) phase of the program.

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 and manipulation of complex circuits and provide insights into cellular interactions that underlie brain function. Critical advances in the treatment of brain disorders in human populations are hindered by our lack of ability to monitor and manipulate circuitry in safe, minimally-invasive ways. Clinical intervention with novel cell and circuit specific tools will require extensive focused research designed to remove barriers to delivery of gene therapies. In addition to identification and removal of barriers, the need to specifically target dysfunctional circuitry poses additional challenges. Neuroscience has experienced an impressive influx of exciting new research tools in the past decade, especially since the launch of the BRAIN Initiative.

Understanding how behavior emerges from the dynamic patterns of electrical and chemical activity of brain circuits is universally recognized as one of the great, unsolved mysteries of science. Advances in recent decades have elucidated how individual elements of the nervous system and brain relate to specific behaviors and cognitive processes. However, there remains much to discover to attain a comprehensive understanding of how the healthy brain functions, specifically, the general principles underlying how cognition and behavior relate to the brain's structural organization and dynamic activities, how the brain interacts with its environment, and how brains maintain their functionality over time. Achieving an understanding of brain structure and function that spans levels of organization, spatial and temporal scales, and the diversity of species requires an international, transdisciplinary collaborative effort to not only integrate discipline-specific ideas and approaches but also extend them to stimulate new discoveries, and innovative concepts, theories, and methodologies.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) intends to support pilot studies aimed to establish molecular, anatomical, and functional cell and circuit census data from selected brain regions of young and old C57BL/6J mice. This will complement and build on current BRAIN Initiative efforts while informing a design for a comprehensive characterization of cells and circuits in the brain across the lifespan, including the generation of a comprehensive 3D brain cell reference atlas of the aging mouse brain.

The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) InitiativeSM is aimed at revolutionizing our understanding of the human brain. By accelerating the development and application of innovative technologies, researchers will be able to produce a new dynamic picture of the brain that, for the first time, will show how individual cells and complex neural circuits interact in both time and space. It is expected that the application of these new tools and technologies will ultimately lead to new ways to treat, cure, and even prevent brain disorders.

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.

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.