Key Dates

RFA-NS-19-001 - BRAIN Initiative: Research Opportunities Using Invasive Neural Recording and Stimulating Technologies in the Human Brain (U01 Clinical Trial Required)

NOT-MH-19-010 - Notice of Data Sharing Policy for the BRAIN Initiative

National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)

National Eye Institute (NEI)

National Institute on Aging (NIA)

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)

Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)

National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)

National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH)

All applications to this funding opportunity announcement should fall within the mission of the Institutes/Centers. The following NIH Offices may co-fund applications assigned to those Institutes/Centers.

Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR)

This Notice informs the research community that the NIH BRAIN Initiative intends to reissue Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) BRAIN Initiative: Research Opportunities Using Invasive Neural Recording and Stimulating Technologies in the Human Brain (U01 Clinical Trial Required).

This Notice is being provided to allow potential applicants sufficient time to develop meaningful collaborations and responsive projects.

The FOA is expected to be published in Fall 2021 with an expected application due date in Fall 2022.

This FOA will utilize the U01 activity code. Details of the planned FOA are provided below.

Invasive surgical procedures provide the unique ability to record and stimulate neurons within precisely localized brain structures in humans. Human studies using invasive technology are often constrained by a limited number of patients and resources available to implement complex experimental protocols and are rarely aggregated in a manner that addresses research questions with appropriate statistical power. Therefore, this RFA seeks applications to assemble diverse, integrated, multi-disciplinary teams that cross boundaries of interdisciplinary collaboration to overcome these fundamental barriers and to investigate high-impact questions in human neuroscience. Projects should maximize opportunities to conduct innovative in vivo neuroscience research made available by direct access to brain recording and stimulating from invasive surgical procedures. Projects should employ approaches guided by specified theoretical constructs and quantitative, mechanistic models where appropriate.

Recipients will join a consortium work 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 RFA will require that applications include a Plan for Enhancing Diverse Perspectives (PEDP) in the proposed research. When a PEDP is required, applications submitted without such a plan will be considered incomplete and will be withdrawn prior to peer review. Evaluation of the applicant’s PEDP will be made during the peer review stages as part of the scorable criteria and during programmatic reviews, and will be used to inform funding decisions. For more information on the PEDP, please visit https://braininitiative.nih.gov/about/plan-enhancing-diverse-perspectives-pedp.

This RFA will also require that the Resource Sharing Plan complies with the policy outlined in NOT-MH-19-010.

Applications are not being solicited at this time. 

Please direct all inquiries to:

James Gnadt, PhD

National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)

301-496-9964

BRAIN-ResOppHu@nih.gov