BRAIN Initiative: Exploratory Research Opportunities Using Invasive Neural Recording and Stimulating Technologies in the Human Brain (U01)

Summary/Description

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 FOA seeks applications to assemble integrated, multi-disciplinary teams to overcome these fundamental barriers. Projects should investigate high-impact questions in human neuroscience. The research should be offered as exploratory research and planning activities to establish feasibility, proof-of-principle and early-stage development that will later compete for continued funding under new or ongoing FOAs of the BRAIN Initiative or under NIH Institute appropriations. 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. In addition, projects that aim to implement novel methods of temporally-linked brain-behavior quantification in laboratory and real-world settings are encouraged.

Awardees will join a consortium work group, coordinated by the NIH, to identify consensus standards of practice as well as supplemental opportunities to collect and provide data for ancillary studies, and to aggregate and standardize data for dissemination among the wider scientific community.

Eligibility