National Institute of Mental Health Grant: Investigating Neural Activity Dynamics for Therapeutic Development

A rich body of evidence suggests that optimal cognitive, affective, and social processes are associated with highly coordinated neural activity. These findings suggest that oscillatory rhythms, their co-modulation across frequency bands, spike-phase correlations, spike population dynamics, and other patterns might be useful drivers of therapeutic development for treatment of cognitive, social, or affective symptoms in neuropsychiatric disorders. This funding opportunity supports projects that test whether modifying electrophysiological patterns during behavior can improve cognitive, affective, or social processing. Applications must use experimental designs that incorporate active manipulations to address at least one, and ideally more, of the following topics: (1) in animals or humans, determine which parameters of neural coordination, when manipulated in isolation, improve particular aspects of cognitive, affective, or social processing; (2) in animals or humans, determine how particular abnormalities at the genomic, molecular, or cellular levels affect the systems-level coordination of electrophysiological patterns during behavior; (3) determine whether in vivo, systems-level electrophysiological changes in behaving animals predict analogous electrophysiological and cognitive improvements in healthy persons or clinical populations; and (4) use biologically-realistic computational models that include systems-level aspects to understand the function and mechanisms by which oscillatory and other electrophysiological patterns unfold across the brain to impact cognitive, affective, or social processing. This FOA uses the R21 grant mechanism, encouraging shorter, higher-risk applications, whereas its companion funding opportunity seeks R01 grant applications.