Notice of Intent to Publish a Funding Opportunity Announcement for BRAIN Initiative Connectivity across Scales (BRAIN CONNECTS): Comprehensive Centers for Human and Non-Human Primate Brain (UM1 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

Summary/Description

The NIH Institutes and Centers contributing to the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies®(BRAIN) Initiative intend to issue a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) to support Comprehensive Centers to develop and test technologies that can be scaled to brain-wide atlases of human and non-human primate circuit connectivity. Centers will establish data collection, analysis, and dissemination pipelines to demonstrate the feasibility of mapping region-to-region connectivity with a minimum resolution of individual cells and/or axon fibers. They will demonstrate the significance of the approach within the context of a chosen CNS sub-volume, by testing specific hypotheses relating circuit structure to function. They will also incorporate toolsets and infrastructure for integrating separately collected data from smaller volumes, as well as from other data collection modalities, and for enabling the neuroscience community to interact with and mine the data for new research questions. Awards will be integrated into the BRAIN CONNECTS Network, consisting of projects from this FOA and its companion announcements, as a coordinated effort aimed at developing the research capacity and technical capabilities to generate wiring diagrams that can span entire brains across multiple scales. 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 Spring 2022 with an expected application due date in Summer 2022. This FOA will utilize the UM1 activity code. Details of the planned FOA are provided below.