Invasive surgical procedures offer the opportunity for unique intracranial interventions such as the ability to record and stimulate intracranially within precisely localized brain structures in humans. Human studies using invasive technology are often constrained by a limited number of patients and available resources, and frequently the resulting datasets need to be aggregated across sites to achieve sufficient statistical power. To overcome these fundamental barriers and to investigate high-impact questions in human neuroscience, this Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) seeks applications to assemble diverse, integrated, multi-disciplinary teams that cross boundaries of interdisciplinary collaboration. The research should be proposed as exploratory research and planning activities to establish feasibility, proof-of-principle and early-stage development that, if successful, would support, enable, and/or lay the groundwork for a potential, subsequent Research Opportunities Using Invasive Neural Recording and Stimulating Technologies in the Human Brain, as described in the companion NOFO (RFA-NS-22-041). Projects should maximize opportunities to conduct innovative in vivo neuroscience research made available by direct access to the brain from invasive surgical procedures. Projects should employ approaches guided by specified theoretical constructs and by quantitative, mechanistic models where appropriate.

Recipients will join a consortium working group, coordinated by the NIH, to identify consensus standards of practice, including neuroethical considerations, to collect and provide data for ancillary studies, and to aggregate and standardize data for dissemination among the wider scientific community.

Please reach out to the NIH Scientific/Research Contact for this announcement, Dr. Merav Sabri (BRAINeROH@ninds.nih.gov), if you have queries.