Brain Behavior Quantification and Synchronization Program | BRAIN

This program supports technological innovation and advancement required to capture, quantify, integrate, and synchronize brain-behavior- environmental interactions with real-time temporal resolution and brain circuit-level specificity.

The NIH BRAIN Initiative has issued new funding opportunity announcements to support the development and validation of next-generation tools, methods, and analytic approaches to precisely quantify complex behaviors and combine them with simultaneous recordings of brain activity.

The goals of the BBQS program are to:

• Develop tools for simultaneous, multimodal measurement of behavior within complex, dynamic physical and/or social environments and synchronize these data with simultaneously recorded neural activity. This includes development of novel sensing technologies to enable better capture of brain-behavior-environmental dynamics.
• Develop novel conceptual and computational models that capture dynamic behavior-environment relationships across multiple timescales and that integrate correlated neural activity. Such advancements can facilitate the establishment of causal brain/behavior relationships and enable closed-loop intervention development. This linkage is especially crucial for higher order cognitive functions for which brain output may be readily available for training and controlling closed-loop neuromodulatory devices to deliver stimulation once certain physiological states, transitions, or conditions are met. Significant clinical/translational advancement may be made possible by incorporating these approaches to treat complex behavioral disorders and interrupt maladaptive behaviors before they occur (such as self-harm, substance misuse, etc.).
• Establish a cross-disciplinary consortium of researchers supported by a BBQS data coordination and artificial intelligence center.
• Develop and disseminate new hardware/software tools, platform technologies, ontologies, research designs, data archives, informatics, data standards, and ethical frameworks that will transform how mechanistic brain-behavioral research is conducted.