BRAIN Initiative: Research Opportunities Using Invasive Neural Recording and Stimulating Technologies in the Human Brain (U01 Basic Experimental Studies with Humans Required) | RFA NS 22 041

Opportunity Information: Apply for RFA NS 22 041

The National Institutes of Health BRAIN Initiative funding opportunity (RFA-NS-22-041) supports ambitious, tightly coordinated team projects that use invasive neural recording and stimulation technologies to study how human brain circuits work in real time during behavior. It is offered as a cooperative agreement (U01), which means awardees should expect substantial NIH scientific involvement and coordination during the project period, not just standard grant oversight. The emphasis is on integrated, interdisciplinary programs where the different parts of the project genuinely depend on each other to answer shared circuit-level questions, rather than a loose collection of independent subprojects.

Scientifically, the opportunity is centered on uncovering overarching principles of dynamic circuit function in the central nervous system, grounded in carefully designed experiments. Proposed studies should link neural activity patterns to measurable behavior and/or perception by systematically controlling stimuli and/or task demands while recording neural signals and/or manipulating neural activity. The FOA is broad about which functional domains can be targeted, explicitly including sensation, perception, emotion, motivation, cognition, decision-making, motor control, communication, and homeostasis. The key is that applications should move beyond descriptive findings toward mechanistic understanding of how circuits generate function, ideally with experiments that can test causal hypotheses (for example, by perturbing neural activity and quantifying the resulting behavioral or perceptual change).

A strong methodological expectation is that projects will be guided by explicit theoretical constructs and will often benefit from quantitative approaches. Applicants are encouraged to incorporate mechanistic and predictive models where they make sense, including statistical modeling and computational frameworks that can explain and forecast circuit dynamics under different conditions. While this FOA focuses on invasive technologies in the human brain, it also allows the use of model systems, potentially spanning multiple species from invertebrates to humans, as long as the choice is well-justified and clearly contributes to the circuit principles being tested. In practice, this creates room for teams to pair human invasive recordings or stimulation with complementary work in animals or other systems to validate mechanisms, improve interpretability, or test hypotheses not feasible in humans alone.

The program is designed for multi-component, cross-disciplinary teams. Competitive applications are expected to bring together the range of expertise needed to execute cutting-edge invasive neuroscience and rigorous analysis, such as neurobiology, engineering, physics, mathematics, statistics, computer science, and data science. The point is not simply to list disciplines, but to show real integration: shared aims, harmonized experimental design, coordinated analytic pipelines, and a clear plan for how the combined team will produce insights that no single lab could achieve alone.

A notable requirement is data and methods coordination across awardees. Applicants must propose a framework for managing data and analysis methods within their project and be prepared to exchange that framework with other BRAIN awardees so that practices can be refined and aligned across the broader program. This implies planning for standardized data structures, documented workflows, reproducible analyses, and a collaborative posture toward community-level refinement of tools and methods, rather than keeping data handling and analytics entirely local to one group.

In terms of award structure and timing, projects are expected to be supported for five years, with the possibility of one competing renewal. The original closing date listed for this opportunity was May 6, 2024. The funding announcement does not provide an award ceiling in the provided text, and the expected number of awards is not specified in the excerpt, so applicants would typically confirm those details in the full FOA or related NIH notices.

Eligibility is broad across U.S.-based organizations and government entities, including state, county, and city governments; special districts; independent school districts; public and private institutions of higher education; federally recognized tribal governments; tribal organizations; public housing authorities; nonprofits with or without 501(c)(3) status; for-profit organizations (other than small businesses); and small businesses. The FOA also explicitly highlights eligibility for a wide range of institution types, including Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions, AANAPISIs, Hispanic-serving Institutions, HBCUs, Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities, faith-based or community-based organizations, regional organizations, and U.S. territories or possessions. Non-U.S. (foreign) institutions are not eligible to apply as applicant organizations, and non-domestic components of U.S. organizations are not eligible to apply. However, foreign components as defined by NIH policy are allowed, meaning certain project activities or collaborations may occur outside the U.S. under NIH rules even though the applicant organization must be domestic.

Overall, this opportunity is best suited for teams that can combine invasive human neural recording and/or stimulation with rigorous behavioral paradigms and modern quantitative analysis to answer circuit-level questions in a way that is causal, mechanistic, and generalizable. It rewards proposals that are deeply interdisciplinary, experimentally precise, theoretically grounded, and operationally ready to share data and analytic practices with the broader BRAIN Initiative community.

• The National Institutes of Health in the education, health, income security and social services sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "BRAIN Initiative: Research Opportunities Using Invasive Neural Recording and Stimulating Technologies in the Human Brain (U01 Basic Experimental Studies with Humans Required)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.173, 93.213, 93.242, 93.273, 93.279, 93.286, 93.853, 93.865, 93.866, 93.867.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2022-05-24.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2024-05-06. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Independent school districts, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, For-profit organizations other than small businesses, Small businesses, Others.

Apply for RFA NS 22 041

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