Funder: National Institutes of Health
Due Dates: October 7, 2026 (Application) | June 23, 2027 (Application) | June 23, 2028 (Application)
Funding Amounts: Most awards anticipated at up to $1 million in direct costs annually, for up to 5 years; listed award ceiling $8 million
Summary: Supports transdisciplinary teams developing mechanistic explanations linking neural circuit components, dynamic activity, and behavior.
Key Information: Requires 3–6 PDs/PIs, one Specific Aim, and a dedicated Program Manager at least 50% FTE.
Description
The NIH BRAIN Initiative’s Integrative Team-Research BRAIN Circuits Program (iBCP) supports complex, transdisciplinary research explaining how neural circuits and their cellular building blocks produce central nervous system function. Using the RM1 mechanism, the program brings together molecular, cellular, circuits, and systems neuroscience, with close collaboration between experimental and computational investigators.
Projects must connect circuit components, dynamic circuit activity, and a tractable behavior or functional output within a unified framework. Expected outcomes include biologically grounded mechanistic insights, predictive and testable hypotheses, and broadly useful solutions for integrating these levels of analysis. Studies may use species ranging from invertebrates to humans, comparative approaches, and new approach methodologies. Disease-related perturbations are permitted only to investigate fundamental CNS function, not disease mechanisms or treatments.
