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Each ACT Fellowship will provide up to $220,000 for up to thirty-three months in support of a systematic and sustained course of study in an empirical science such as physics, psychology, biology, genetics, cognitive science, neuroscience, or sociology. Acceptable courses of study might include a plan to audit undergraduate and graduate-level courses, a plan to spend time in residence at a research lab, or a plan to earn a degree in an empirical science. This iteration of the program also will permit applicants to request that up to one year of the ACT Fellowship be used to support a small-scale pilot scientific research project that improves or enhances the capacity, skill, and talent of the fellow to investigate the above-described Big Questions. Fellows may undertake their study at their home institution or another institution. All fellows must have a faculty mentor in their cross-training discipline.

Repeated exposure to drugs of abuse can cause changes in neuronal structure and function that contribute to and sustain drug use. Research has largely focused on the interactions of drugs with specific neuronal targets, and on the consequences of drug exposure on neuronal function, excitability, neuroplasticity, and neurochemistry. However, emerging evidence shows that neuroimmune factors, released from both glia or neurons, can modulate neuronal structure and function, either by affecting neuron-glia interactions or through direct effects on neurons. Yet the role of neuroimmune signaling in the modulation of neuronal function as it affects the expression of substance use behaviors is poorly understood. Research has shown that drugs of abuse, including methamphetamine, morphine, cocaine and nicotine, can elicit neuroinflammatory responses. Stress, an important contributor to relapse, can also elicit neuroimmune responses. Consequently, neuroimmune signaling may be integral to mechanisms underlying drug misuse, addiction, and other consequences of repeated drug use. Further, because the molecular targets and receptors for abused substances differ, the complement of neuroimmune factors affected by exposure to a particular drug may be drug-specific. Research to identify the commonalities between specific drugs of abuse, the neuroimmune factors released by drug use, and the neuroanatomical specificity of the responses is needed. It is expected that the contributing actions of neuroimmune signaling to addictive behaviors are most likely due not to obvious brain damage and overt pathology, but to the consequences of such signaling in altering specific molecular and cellular processes within glia, neurons, and neural circuits.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) invites applications that focus on clarifying the relationship between delirium and Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD). Specifically sought is research focusing on understanding why persons with ADRD are at increased risk to develop delirium, often with a worse prognosis compared to those without antecedent ADRD, and why patients who experience delirium are at higher risk to develop subsequent short- and/or long-term mild cognitive impairment or ADRD, often with an accelerated rate of cognitive decline compared to those without preceding delirium. Relevant research projects may focus on, but are not limited to, those that A) provide insight into possible common, sequential, causative, contributory and/or synergistic pathways underlying both ADRD and delirium, B) elucidate mechanisms that lead to the development of delirium against the background of aging and/or neurodegeneration, with particular emphasis on use of appropriate animal models, C) identify risk factors for the onset and/or progression of delirium in those with ADRD and vice versa, D) diagnose and assess one condition in the setting of the other, E) identify putative phenotypes of patients with co-existing ADRD and delirium, or F) test pharmacologic and/or non-pharmacologic strategies to prevent, treat, or reduce the impact of delirium in patients with ADRD and vice versa. Research supported by this FOA is intended to provide mechanistic insight to improve risk assessment, diagnosis, phenotyping, prevention, and management approaches for both delirium and ADRD.

The National Multiple Sclerosis Society believes in a world free of MS and is dedicated to ensuring that people affected by MS can live their best lives. To that end, the organization is currently accepting applications for its Harry Weaver Neuroscience Scholar Award, which is named for Harry Weaver, PhD, known worldwide for his contribution to neuroscience and multiple sclerosis research and the society's director of research from 1966-1977. Over the course of his tenure and career, Weaver encouraged young investigators to enter and pursue MS research and broaden understanding of basic and clinical aspects of multiple sclerosis. Through the program, five-year grants in support of salary and research will be awarded to highly-qualified candidates who have concluded their research training and begun their academic careers as an independent investigator in an area related to multiple sclerosis. Up to 75 percent of annual salary support may be requested, not to exceed $75,000 in year one, as well as up to $30,000 for research-associated direct costs, with incremental increases possible in each of the remaining four years.

"This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) encourages research on the biology of high confidence risk factors associated with complex brain disorders, with a focus on the intracellular, transcellular and circuit substrates of neural function. For the purposes of this FOA, the term "complex" can refer to a multifactorial contribution to risk (e.g., polygenic and/or environmental) and/or highly distributed functional features of the brain disorder. Studies may be either hypothesis-generating (unbiased discovery) or hypothesis-testing in design and may utilize in vivo, in situ, or in vitro experimental paradigms, e.g., model organisms or human cell-based assays. While behavioral paradigms and outcome measures can be incorporated into the research design to facilitate the characterization of intracellular, transcellular and circuit mechanisms, these are neither required nor expected. Studies should not attempt to "model" disorders but instead should aim to elucidate the neurobiological impact of individual or combined risk factor(s), such as the affected molecular and cellular components and their relationships within defined biological process(es). This can include the fundamental biology of these factors, components and processes. The resulting paradigms, component pathways and biological processes should be disseminated with sufficient detail to enrich common and/or federated data resources (e.g., those contributing to the Gene Ontology, Synaptic Gene Ontology, FAIR Data Informatics) in order to bridge the gap between disease risk factors, biological mechanism and therapeutic target identification. The present announcement (R21 activity code) can be used for applications to develop early stage, high-risk, exploratory approaches or establish proof-of-concept where there is little or no preliminary data."

NSF-supported science and engineering research increasingly relies on cutting-edge infrastructure. With its Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program and Major Multi-user Facilities (Major Facilities) projects, NSF supports infrastructure projects at the lower and higher ends of infrastructure scales across science and engineering research disciplines. The Mid-scale Research Infrastructure Big Idea is intended to provide NSF with an agile, Foundation-wide process to fund experimental research capabilities in the mid-scale range between the MRI and Major Facilities thresholds. NSF defines Research Infrastructure (RI) as any combination of facilities, equipment, instrumentation, or computational hardware or software, and the necessary human capital in support of the same. Major facilities and mid-scale projects are subsets of research infrastructure. The NSF Mid-scale Research Infrastructure-1 Program (Mid-scale RI-1) supports the design or implementation of unique and compelling RI projects. Mid-scale RI-1 implementation projects may include any combination of equipment, instrumentation, cyberinfrastructure, broadly used large-scale datasets, and the commissioning and/or personnel needed to successfully complete the project, or the design efforts intended to lead to eventual implementation of a mid-scale class project. Mid-scale RI-1 design projects will include the design efforts intended to lead to eventual implementation of a mid-scale class RI project. Mid-scale RI-1 projects should fill a research community-defined scientific need or enable a national research priority to be met. Mid-scale RI-projects should also enable US researchers to remain competitive in a global research environment and involve the training of a diverse workforce engaged in the design and implementation of STEM infrastructure.

The overall goal of this initiative is to identify, optimize, and evaluate measures of neurophysiological processes that are disrupted within or across mental disorders and which can be assessed in animals and humans. The goal is to support further development of these measures as assays for evaluating potential new drug and device therapies and their targets. Data will also reveal assay measures where the performance between preclinical species and humans is dissimilar, thus establishing a firm basis for limiting speculative extrapolations of preclinical findings. Ultimately, the goal of this FOA is to improve the efficiency of the therapeutic development process by addressing inconsistencies between the preclinical screening pipeline and clinical evaluation of new treatment candidates and thereby hasten the development of more effective treatments for mental disorders. The objectives of the FOA will be accomplished by supporting partnerships among basic and translational neuroscientists who are committed to advancing the discovery of physiological measures as tools for target validation and therapeutic development. Groups will be tasked with building a target-engagement-linked-to-functional-brain-effect suite of assays with potential to translate from animals to humans and thus serve as a basis for selecting preclinical treatment candidates for further development and clinical testing. Towards this goal, the FOA will support development, optimization and evaluation of brain based assays in both preclinical species and in healthy humans and the evaluation of assay performance in response to carefully selected chemical, physiological, or behavioral manipulations.

The purpose of this funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is to encourage research grant applications that propose to develop or substantially modify existing cutting-edge tools that will advance prenatal and/or pediatric hydrocephalus research. The primary objective of this FOA is to remove barriers to hydrocephalus research that are due to scarcity of tools to investigate both the disease mechanisms and alternative therapies (non-shunt) in a rigorous manner. Applications should aim to transform the field of prenatal and/or pediatric hydrocephalus research by generating tools including animal and cell models, novel methods and innovative technologies that will be widely used throughout the neuroscience community to understand disease mechanisms and/or developing therapeutics.

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to support an ancillary study grant application(s) to add psychological, behavioral, and/or neurocognitive assessments to the data collection in adults (> 18 years of age) enrolled at the clinical sites in the Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity in Humans Consortium (MoTrPAC) supported by the NIH Common Fund. This ancillary study FOA complements the parent MoTrPAC study by supporting research to elucidate the individual level psychological, behavioral, and neurocognitive characteristics that explain variation in individual response and adherence to a program of physical activity. The ultimate goal of the research supported by this FOA is to characterize individual differences in response to exercise over the course of the MoTrPAC protocol in order to identify novel treatment targets and inform personalized physical activity intervention approaches in the future.

The purpose of this FOA is to stimulate development of translation-enabling models for evaluating survival and integration of regenerated photoreceptors (PRCs) and retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) in model systems that are closer to human visual anatomy, function and/or disease than current models. The development of these models, tools, devices, novel therapies and/or other resources is expected to provide a resource to vision researchers developing cell-replacement therapies for visual system diseases and disorders. This FOA seeks to develop models that emulate critical aspects of a human blinding disease that might be amenable to regenerative therapy. The model system might involve specific defects generated by transgenic gene insertion and/or deletion, gene editing, chemical/physical means, and/or other approaches to emulate characteristics of human disease or create defects amenable to cell-replacement therapy. Model systems using non-human primates or other cone-dominant species that are more representative of the anatomy and physiology of the human retina are highly encouraged. Other biological models are acceptable provided they meet the overall objectives of the FOA.

The purpose of the NIH Summer Research Experience Program (referred to as the Summer Research Program) is to provide a high quality research experience for high school and college students and for science teachers during the summer academic break. The NIH expects that such programs will: help attract young students to careers in science; provide opportunities for college students to gain valuable research experience to help prepare them for graduate school; and enhance the skills of science teachers and enable them to more effectively communicate the nature of the scientific process to their students. The programs would also contribute to enhancing overall science literacy. Summer Research Programs that expand and complement existing summer educational and training programs are encouraged.

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) supports high impact efforts to make resources available to neuroscience researchers.  Projects should engage in one or more of the following activities: facilitating access to cutting edge reagents or techniques, dissemination of resources to new user groups, or innovative approaches to increase the scale/efficiency of resource production and delivery.  Applications focused primarily on technology or software development are not responsive to this FOA, as the focus is on dissemination or provision of resources.  Use of existing technologies to develop new reagents or genetic lines of significant value to the research community may be appropriate. Projects should address compelling needs of broad communities of neuroscience researchers or should offer unique services that otherwise would be unavailable.

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to encourage the submission of grant applications that propose to examine the molecular, cellular, circuit, and behavioral responses to neuroimmune signaling within the central nervous system (CNS) as it pertains to the initiation, escalation, and maintenance of, and the neurological consequences resulting from, substance use disorders (SUDs), and to abstinence and withdrawal from, and subsequent relapse of, drug use. The goal of this understudied area of research is to determine the extent to which neuroimmune responses contribute to or protect against current and future risk and consequences of SUDs.

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to encourage the submission of research project grant applications that propose to examine the molecular, cellular, circuit, and behavioral responses to neuroimmune signaling within the central nervous system (CNS) as it pertains to the initiation, escalation, and maintenance of, and the neurological consequences resulting from, substance use disorders (SUDs), and to abstinence and withdrawal from, and subsequent relapse of, drug use. The goal of this understudied area of research is to determine the extent to which neuroimmune responses contribute to or protect against current and future risk and consequences of SUDs.

The McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience supports innovative research designed to bring science closer to the day when diseases of the brain can be accurately diagnosed, prevented, and treated. To this end, the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience invites applications for the 2014 McKnight Scholar Awards. These awards were established to encourage emerging neuroscientists to focus on disorders of learning and memory. Applicants for the McKnight Scholar Awards must demonstrate interest in solving important problems in relevant areas of neuroscience, including the translation of basic research to clinical neuroscience. Awards are given to exceptional young scientists who hold the M.D. and/or Ph.D. degree and who are in the early stages of establishing an independent laboratory and research career. Traditionally, successful candidates have held faculty positions for at least one year. Up to six McKnight Scholars each will receive three years of support, beginning July 1, 2014.

The Whitehall Foundation, through its program of grants and grants-in-aid, assists scholarly research in the life sciences. It is the Foundation's policy to assist those dynamic areas of basic biological research that are not heavily supported by Federal Agencies or other foundations with specialized missions. In order to respond to the changing environment, the Whitehall Foundation periodically reassesses the need for financial support by the various fields of biological research. The Foundation does not award funds to investigators who have substantial existing or potential support, even if it is for an unrelated purpose. Applications may be held in abeyance until the results of other funding decisions are determined. While it is difficult to assign a specific dollar amount to this policy and each case is unique, the Foundation currently defines "substantial" as approximately $200,000 per year (including both direct and indirect expense but excluding the Principal Investigator's salary). The Foundation is currently interested in basic research in neurobiology, defined as follows: Invertebrate and vertebrate (excluding clinical) neurobiology, specifically investigations of neural mechanisms involved in sensory, motor, and other complex functions of the whole organism as these relate to behavior. The overall goal should be to better understand behavioral output or brain mechanisms of behavior. The Foundation does not support research focused primarily on disease(s) unless it will also provide insights into normal functioning.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) encourages exploratory/developmental research grant applications, proposing the development of innovative, collaborative research projects on brain and other nervous system function and disorders throughout life, relevant to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Scientists in the United States (U.S.) or upper middle income countries (UMICs) are eligible to partner with scientists in LMIC institutions. Income categories used are as defined by the World Bank at http://data.worldbank.org/about/country-classifications/country-and-lending-groups. These grants are expected to inform the development of more comprehensive research programs that contribute to the long-term goals of building sustainable research capacity in LMICs to address nervous system development, function and impairment throughout life and to lead to diagnostics, prevention, treatment and implementation strategies. The proposed work may also contribute to developing a base for research networking and evidence-based policy beyond the specific research project.

A central goal of the BRAIN Initiative is to understand how electrical and chemical signals code information in neural circuits and give rise to sensations, thoughts, emotions and actions. Available technologies for recording and manipulating neural circuit activity in human and animal experiments are not sufficient to accomplish this goal. Non-invasive technologies are low resolution and/or provide indirect measures such as blood flow, which are imprecise. Invasive technologies can provide information at the level of single neurons producing the fundamental biophysical signals, but they can only be applied to tens or hundreds of neurons, out of a total number in the human brain estimated at 85 billion. Previous BRAIN FOAs sought to develop novel technology (RFA-NS-15-003) or to optimize existing technology ready for in-vivo proof-of-concept testing and collection of preliminary data (RFA-NS-15-004). This FOA seeks applications for technology at an even earlier stage of development. It seeks new and untested ideas that are in the very earliest stages. The support provided might enable calculations, simulations, computational models, or other mathematical approaches for demonstrating that the signal sources and/or measurement technologies are theoretically capable of meeting the demands of large-scale recording or manipulation of circuit activity. The support might also be used for building and testing phantoms, prototypes, in-vitro or other bench-top models in order to validate underlying theoretical assumptions in preparation for future FOAs aimed at testing in animal models. Invasive or non-invasive approaches are sought that will ultimately enable or reduce the current barriers to large-scale recording or manipulation of neural activity, and that would be compatible with experiments in humans or behaving animals. Applications are encouraged from any qualified individuals, including physicists, engineers, theoreticians, and scientists, especially those no

The SCIMS program is designed to provide a multidisciplinary system of rehabilitation care specifically to meet the needs of individuals with SCI. To be eligible for a SCI Model Systems grant, an applicant institution must encompass a continuum of care for people with SCI, including emergency medical services, acute care services, acute medical rehabilitation services, and post-acute services. For purposes of this program, SCI is defined as a clinically discernible degree of neurologic impairment of the spinal cord following a traumatic event. NIDILRR currently supports 14 SCIMS centers through this program. The funding for these Centers is primarily used to conduct SCI research and to collect and send data to the SCIMS longitudinal database. SCIMS Centers will be funded at varying amounts up to the maximum award based on the numbers of subjects eligible for follow-up in the existing SCIMS longitudinal database. Existing centers with significantly larger numbers of subjects will receive higher funding within the specified range, as determined by NIDILRR after the applicant is selected for funding. Applicants provide detailed budgets for each research project and for data collection costs associated with the longitudinal database. Funding will be determined individually for each successful applicant, up to the maximum allowed, based upon the documented workload associated with the follow-up data collection, the other costs of the grant, and the overall budgetary limits of the program