United States Neuroscience Initiatives

U.S. BRAIN Initiative

The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, announced by President Barack Obama April 2, 2013, will enable federal agencies and private-sector partners to develop tools and plans that will help accelerate fundamental discoveries and improve the health and quality of life for millions.

On Sept. 30, 2014, the White House held a conference on the BRAIN Initiative. New public and private BRAIN Initiative funding partners were announced. To learn more:

• Read about the previously funded awards, current funding partners, and future priority areas of the initiative.
• Learn more about the BRAIN Initiative.

National Institutes of Health

The overarching goal of NIH’s contribution to the BRAIN Initiative is to map the circuits of the brain and the activity within those circuits to understand our unique cognitive and behavioral capabilities. NIH is focused on developing technologies that have the potential to benefit all of neuroscience and even non-neuroscience research.

• BRAIN 2025: A Scientific Vision was released by the BRAIN Working Group on June 5, 2014.
• On Sept. 30, 2014, NIH announced its first set of BRAIN Initiative Awards, totaling $46 million for 2014. The investments cover 58 projects involving more than 100 investigators from 15 states and several countries.
• As of Nov. 2, 2018, the NIH announced funding of over 200 new awards, totaling $220 million. Supported by Congress through both the regular appropriations process and the 21st Century Cures Act, this brings the total 2018 support for the program to more than $400 million, which is 50 percent more than the amount spent in 2017.

National Science Foundation

The NSF portion of the BRAIN Initiative aims to integrate across scales (e.g., genes to behavior) and disciplines (e.g., engineering and life sciences) to establish predictive theories of brain structure and function, and to use these theories to maintain and restore the healthy brain. It has a strong focus on technology and cyber tool development and the training of new generations of scientists to use the resources that emerge from the BRAIN Initiative.

• NSF has launched a new portal called Understanding the Brain dedicated to the agency’s activities associated with the BRAIN Initiative
• NSF funded 35 Early Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) proposals that seek to develop new technologies to further our ability to study and understand brain function.
• NSF will invest in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research related to the BRAIN Initiative through a call for research on Integrative Strategies for Understanding Neural and Cognitive Systems and through an Idea Labs workshop.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

DARPA seeks to develop a new understanding of complex, systems-based disorders of the brain. DARPA supports five programs as a part of this initiative: Systems-Based Neurotechnology for Emerging Therapies (SUBNETS); Restoring Active Memory (RAM); Neuro-Function, Activity, Structure, and Technology (Neuro-Fast); Hand Proprioception and Touch Interfaces (HAPTIX); and ElectRX.

• SUBNETS is pursuing advances in neuroscience and neurotechnology that could lead to new clinical understanding of how neuropsychological illnesses manifest in the brain and to advanced therapies, such as deep brain stimulation, to reduce the burden and severity of illness.
• The RAM program will develop new methods for analysis and decoding of neural signals in order to understand how neural stimulation could be applied to facilitate the recovery of memory encoding following brain injury.
• Neuro-Fast is working to decode brain activity and neuronal firing to understand the structure and behavior of neural networks.
• HAPTIX seeks to enhance motor control and restore proprioception and sensation of touch in prosthetic users.
• ElectRX studies the peripheral nervous system, examining if targeted stimulation of the system could lead to new treatments for illness or promote self-healing.

Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity

IARPA was announced as a partner in the BRAIN Initiative on Sept. 30, 2014. IARPA will use multidisciplinary techniques to advance understanding of cognition and computation in the brain. Several projects and programs will be sponsored and executed in FY2015.

• Integrated Cognitive-Neuroscience Architectures for Understanding Sensemaking (ICArUS), which uses models to understand how the human brain is able to make sense of sparse, ambiguous data.
• The Knowledge Representation in Neural Systems (KRNS) program will examine how the brain represents conceptual knowledge.
• The Strengthening Human Adaptive Reasoning and Problem-Solving (SHARP) program will develop neural interventions for optimizing reasoning and problem-solving.
• The Machine Intelligence from Cortical Networks (MICrONS) program will seek to improve machine learning by collecting information from cortical microcircuits, and using the brain’s algorithms to create computational neural models.

The Food and Drug Administration

The FDA was announced as a partner in the BRAIN Initiative on Sept. 30, 2014. The FDA seeks to increase the transparency of the regulatory process for developers of new neurological medical devices and technologies.

The FDA is continuing to develop neurological medical devices while also conducting regulatory research to monitor the safety and efficacy of these devices.

Private-Sector Partners

The BRAIN Initiative has involved nine private-sector partners:

• Allen Institute for Brain Science
• Howard Hughes Medical Institute
• Kavli Foundation
• Salk Institute for Biological Studies
• National Photonics Initiative
• G.E.
• Google
• GlaxoSmithKline
• Inscopix

Private Research Efforts

Several universities and foundations are aligning over $240 million of their research interests with the BRAIN Initiative, including:

• University of Pittsburgh
• The Simons Foundation
• The Carnegie Mellon University
• University of Texas System
• University of California, Berkeley in connection with Carl Zeiss Microscopy
• University of Utah
• Boston University
• The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation
• Pediatric Brain Foundation
• The Pacific Northwest Neuroscience Neighborhood
• The Neurotechnology Architecting Network