This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) supports the development and validation of next-generation tools, methods, and analytic approaches to precisely quantify behaviors and combine them with simultaneous recordings of brain activity in humans. Tools used for measuring and analyzing behavior should be multi-modal, with the appropriate accuracy, specificity, temporal resolution, and flexibility necessary for integration with existing tools used to measure and modulate the brain circuits that give rise to those behaviors.

This R61/R33 FOA is intended to support biphasic applications for novel tools development (i.e., hardware/software) in the R61 phase, followed by the integration/synchronization of these novel tools with established methods for recording human brain activity in the R33 phase. Applications must propose one or more milestones, which clearly define the criteria for the success of the R61 project objectives. Transition to the R33 phase will depend on demonstration of milestone completion. Applications should be submitted by multi-disciplinary teams with expertise spanning behavior and behavioral measurement, neurobiology, social systems, computer/data systems, engineering, biostatistics, neuroethics, and artificial intelligence. Applicants pursuing brain-behavior quantification and synchronization tool development in non-human animals, or pursuing comparative animal studies including humans, are not responsive to this FOA and should consider related Brain-Behavior Quantification and Synchronization (BBQS) opportunities listed on the BRAIN Initiative website, or reach out to the contacts (see Section VII: Agency Contacts) for guidance on relevant opportunities.