NIH Awards Research Grants to Map Human Brain in Action

The National Institutes of Health recently awarded $46 million to more than 100 researchers in 15 U.S. states and three countries in a multiyear plan to produce the first dynamic view of the human brain in action.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently awarded $46 million to researchers in 15 U.S. states and three countries as part of a multiyear plan to produce the first dynamic view of the human brain.

“Some have called it America’s next moonshot. Indeed, like the historic effort that culminated with the first moon landing in 1969, the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative is a bold, ambitious endeavor that will require the energy of thousands of our nation’s most creative minds working together over the long haul,” NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins writes in a September 30 blog post.

President Obama in 2013 announced the BRAIN Initiative, which aims to determine how individual cells and complex neural circuits interact in both time and space. Such information could help researchers find new ways to treat, cure and even prevent brain disorders.

“This new view will revolutionize our understanding of how we think, feel, learn, remember, and move, transforming efforts to help the more than 1 billion people worldwide who suffer from autism, depression, schizophrenia, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and other devastating brain disorders,” Collins writes.

More information about the BRAIN Initiative projects funded in this initial round of grants is available on the NIH website.

Above, an illustration by Jill George of NIH titled “Moonshot to the BRAIN.”