BRAIN Initiative: Integrative Team-Research BRAIN Circuits Program - iTeamBCP (RM1 Clinical Trial Optional)

The BRAIN Initiative: Integrative Team-Research BRAIN Circuits Program - iBCP (RM1 Clinical Trial Not Allowed), funding opportunity RFA-NS-27-002, is a federal research grant opportunity issued by the National Institutes of Health under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The participating NIH components include the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and multiple other NIH Institutes and Centers. The program supports the Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies BRAIN Initiative and its goal of advancing understanding of brain function through technologies and approaches that map, monitor, and modulate brain circuits. The iBCP specifically seeks mechanistic, biologically grounded explanations of how neural circuits and their cellular building blocks give rise to central nervous system function. The program supports transdisciplinary teams that integrate molecular and cellular neuroscience, circuits and systems neuroscience, and experimental and computational expertise. Each application must pursue a single Specific Aim and explicitly integrate three required levels of analysis: circuit components, dynamic circuit activity, and behavior or a defined functional output. Projects must include in vivo CNS recordings of neural population activity at cellular resolution and with sub-second temporal precision during the relevant behavior or physiological correlate. Teams must incorporate sufficiently detailed cell-type information and must integrate experimental and computational components. Projects primarily focused on disease mechanisms, therapeutics, or treatments are non-responsive, although disease-related perturbations may be used to investigate fundamental CNS mechanisms. Projects primarily devoted to collecting large-scale datasets without a clear mechanistic analysis plan are also non-responsive. NIH BRAIN Initiative intends to commit up to $8 million per fiscal year to fund up to five awards. Application budgets must reflect the actual needs of the proposed project, and NIH anticipates that most awards will not exceed $1 million in direct costs per fiscal year. The maximum project period is five years. Budget requests may include justified costs for team coordination, integrative activities, travel across laboratories, the BRAIN Initiative Conference, consortium participation, resource and data sharing, data management systems, and professional data science staff. Certain equipment, animal research, and clinical research costs may be requested when justified. Cost sharing is not required. Clinical trials are not allowed, although human-subject activities that do not constitute clinical trials may be proposed. Eligible applicants include public and private institutions of higher education; nonprofits with or without 501(c)(3) status; small businesses and other for-profit organizations; state, county, city or township, and special district governments; federally recognized and other tribal governments; eligible federal agencies; U.S. territories or possessions; independent school districts; public or Indian housing authorities; Native American tribal organizations; faith-based or community-based organizations; and regional organizations. Non-U.S. entities and non-U.S. components of U.S. organizations are not eligible. Foreign components are allowed, but applications involving foreign subawards or subcontracts will not be considered for funding. Applications must use a multiple PD/PI structure with three to six PDs/PIs possessing complementary expertise. Each PD/PI generally should commit at least 2.4 person months, and the project must include a dedicated Program Manager with at least 50 percent FTE. Co-mentorship across disciplines is also required. Applications must follow the NIH Research application instructions and the program-specific requirements of the NOFO. The Research Strategy is limited to 15 pages and consists of a Scientific Plan of up to 12 pages, Benchmarks for Success and Timeline of up to one page, and a Multi-Level Integration and Team Management Plan of up to two pages. Applicants must state only one Specific Aim. Required planning includes scientific and technical integration, cross-team data management and sharing, resource allocation, team management, co-mentorship, knowledge transfer, communication, and credit attribution. A Data Management and Sharing Plan is required, and BRAIN Initiative data-sharing requirements apply. Applications may be prepared and submitted through NIH ASSIST, an institutional system-to-system solution, or Grants.gov Workspace, with application status tracked through eRA Commons. All required organizational and investigator registrations must be completed before submission. Applications are evaluated through NIH scientific peer review. Review considerations include significance, investigators, innovation, approach, and environment, with program-specific emphasis on mechanistic insight, explicit integration of circuit components, dynamic circuit activity and behavior, experimental-computational integration, transformative team science, appropriate experimental systems, and broadly useful approaches for bridging levels of analysis. Funding decisions also consider scientific and technical merit, availability of funds, and relevance to program priorities. Potential applicants are encouraged to consult BRAIN program staff very early in planning and at least eight weeks before the application deadline regarding responsiveness, the single research aim, team composition, and scope. Scientific inquiries may be directed to BRAINCircuits@nih.gov. The opportunity was posted August 31, 2026, and opens for submission September 7, 2026. The first application deadline is October 7, 2026, followed by additional listed deadlines of June 23, 2027, and June 23, 2028. Applications are due by 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization, and late applications will not be accepted. For the October 2026 cycle, scientific merit review is expected in March 2027, Advisory Council review in May 2027, and the earliest start date is July 2027. For the June 2027 and June 2028 cycles, scientific review is expected in November of the respective year, Council review the following January, and the earliest start date the following April. The NOFO expires June 24, 2028.

Consult BRAIN program staff very early and at least 8 weeks before the deadline about responsiveness, the single research aim, team composition, and scope. Build the application around one tightly integrated Specific Aim linking circuit components, in vivo dynamic circuit activity at cellular and sub-second resolution, and behavior. Explicitly integrate experimental and computational work, justify the transformative team-based scale, include risk mitigation and alternatives, and resource cross-team data integration. Avoid disease-focused proposals, multiple Specific Aims, dataset collection without a mechanistic plan, or failure to meet the required three-level integration and recording requirements.