Official funding announcement — preliminary draft
Funder: National Institutes of Health
Opportunity number: RFA-DC-27-004
Official listed status: posted
Closing information: 2027-02-11 (official deadline clock time and time zone must be checked in NOFO)
Award disclosure: Official federal synopsis lists an award ceiling of 700,000; applicant-level applicability requires full-NOFO review.
Applicant categories in federal synopsis: Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized); State governments; Special district governments; Private institutions of higher education; For profit organizations other than small businesses; Public and State controlled institutions of higher education; Nonprofits that do not have a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education; Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities; County governments; Independent school districts; Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments); Nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education; Small businesses; Others (see text field entitled "Additional Information on Eligibility" for clarification); City or township governments
Federal synopsis
Invasive surgical procedures in humans offer the unique opportunity to intracranially record and stimulate neuronal activity within precisely localized brain structures, enabling high-impact human neuroscience investigations. This NOFO seeks exploratory research projects, from newly formed or established multi-disciplinary teams, to understand how dynamic activity of single cells and ensembles of neurons in spatially organized networks gives rise to the internal states we experience as sensations, perceptions, emotions, thoughts, and memories, and to observable motor and social behaviors. The research should be proposed as exploratory research and planning activities to establish feasibility and early-stage development that, if successful, would support, enable, and/or lay the groundwork for a potential, subsequent research project grant applications using invasive neural recording and stimulation technologies in the human brain. Projects should maximize opportunities to conduct innovative in vivo human 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.
Draft intake record. Eligibility, program terms, current amendments and applicant ceiling must be independently verified before publishing.