Gray Stripes

Over the next several years,  the FAS Research Development group will track and disseminate all funding opportunities related to the BRAIN Initiative.  These funding opportunities will be sent to a targeted list of faculty. The list will include faculty affiliates of the Center for Brain Science (CBS) and the Mind Brain Behavior (MBB) Interfaculty Initiative. This project is being carried out in collaboration with the Center for Brain Science. All opportunities will be archived and recipients may unsubscribe at any time.

 
FAS Research Development
BRAIN Initiative Update

On Thursday, October 24, 2013, DARPA announced a programming focus related to the BRAIN Initiative -- Systems-Based Neurotechnology and Understanding for the Treatment of Neuropsychological Illnesses.

 

DARPA has created the Systems-Based Neurotechnology for Emerging Therapies (SUBNETS) program to pursue advances in neuroscience and neurotechnology that can lead to new clinical understanding of how neuropsychological illnesses manifest in the brain and to advance therapies to reduce the burden and severity of illness in afflicted populations, including troops and veterans. The program will pursue a new investigative approach that establishes the characteristics of distributed neural systems and attempts to develop and apply therapies that incorporate near real-time recording, analysis and stimulation in next-generation devices inspired by current Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS).

 

DARPA is specifically interested in evaluating the underlying systems which contribute to the following conditions as described by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders:

 

�         Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

�         Major Depression

�         Borderline Personality Disorder

�         General Anxiety Disorder.

 

DARPA also seeks to evaluate the representation in the central nervous system of:

 

�         Traumatic Brain Injury

�         Substance Abuse/Addiction

�         Fibromyalgia/Chronic Pain.

 

The work will require development of novel medical hardware, complex modeling of human neural systems, clinical neurology and animal research. DARPA expects that successful teams will span across disciplines including psychiatry, neurosurgery, neural engineering, microelectronics, neuroscience, statistics and computational modeling.

 

SUBNETS Deadlines:

 

White Papers are due by November 14, 2013 at 4:00pm EST

Full proposals are due by December 17, 2013 at 4:00pm EST

 

See the BAA for detailed application instructions. DARPA announced that it intends to commit more than $70 million over five years to this program. DARPA will be allocated $50 million in FY14 under President Obama's BRAIN Initiative. The agency has not yet specified precisely how much it will spend in the first year, and all the numbers are dependent on the final federal budget.

 

Contact Jennifer Corby at jcorby@fas.harvard.edu with your questions or feedback.

 
Additional information: