Six Harvard scientists are among those receiving $150 million in Funding from the NIH Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative. The BRAIN Initiative ” is aimed at revolutionizing our understanding of the human brain. By accelerating the development and application of innovative technologies, researchers will be able to produce a revolutionary new dynamic picture of the brain that, for the first time, shows how individual cells and complex neural circuits interact in both time and space.”

Paola Arlotta, Catherine Dulac, and Xiaowei Zhuang, received a $64.7 million grant to construct a detailed mouse brain atlas. As described in these Harvard Gazette[1] [2] articles, the grant will fund this project for five years and aims to identify each cell type in the mouse brain, determine which genes are used by each cell type, and to map the cells’ physical location within the mouse brain.

As part of a separate grant, Xiaowei Zhuang will work in conjunction with researchers at the Seattle-based Allen Institute. This project will use high-throughput sequencing and imaging technologies developed in her lab to create the first comprehensive cell-type atlas of a mouse brain, and to characterize the molecular, anatomical and functional qualities of each.

Florian Engert, Jeff Lichtman, Haim Sompolinsky, and Sam Kunes, will collaborate on an $18 million-plus project aimed at understanding how neural circuits generate behavior. As highlighted in the Harvard Gazette, this project seeks to produce a comprehensive model of how neural circuits generate behavior in zebrafish as well as to better understand how the brain categorizes different stimuli to make decisions and also how the function of neural circuits is altered by stimuli such as stress, hunger, and loneliness.

Read about Paola, Catherine, and Xiaowei’s project here.
Read about Xiawei’s project with the Allen Institute here.
Read about Florian, Jeff, Haim, and Sam’s project here.
Find out about other Harvard NIH BRAIN Initiative awards here.