The NIH BRAIN Initiative’s impacts in systems and computational neuroscience and team-scale research 2014–2023
- National Institutes of Health, United States
Figures
Figure 1
Ecosystem of funding mechanisms, awards, and expenditures.
(A) Ecosystem of funding mechanisms. Exploratory versions of each research track are designed to provide an enabling step, where needed, that goes through peer review to larger, more elaborated awards. (B) Tabulation of number of awards and total spending for 2014–2023, not including approved out-years of funds yet to be expended.
Figure 2
NIH expenditures in systems and computational neuroscience for 10 years before and after launch of the BRAIN Initiative.
Baseline is calculated from NIH RCDC (Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization) search of ‘neurosciences research’ [OR] ‘computational neuroscience’ (Sys & Comp NS), excluding BRAIN Awards. BRAIN Initiative awards are tallied as all Sys & Comp NS within BRAIN and all awards within the BRAIN Circuits funding announcements.
Figure 3
Accumulating performance measures (publications and citations) for awards in the elaborated version of each funding tract by year from award.
Figure 4
The U19 awards are designated according to a branding name to represent the topic of study.
Osmonauts (Cracking the Olfactory Code); MouseV1 (Mouse Visual Cortex); Sensation (Coding, Sensation, Behavior); SCC (Spinal Control Circuits); MoC3 (Motor Control Circuits, Computation); MSCZ (Multiscale Circuits of Zebrafish); FlyLoops (Feedback Loops of Flies); aABC (almost Anything But Cortex), DOPE (Dopamine); L2L (Learning to Learn); Ripple (Hippocampal Ripple-Related Episodic Memory); brainCOGS (Brain Circuits of Cognitive Systems); OXT (Oxytocin Group); LightSPACE (All optical read/write in the brain); IBL-U19 International Brain Laboratory; TIM (Thalamus In the Middle); CIM (Causality in Motion); BrainflowzZZ (Cerebral fluid flow and sleep); A-Team (Astrocyte modulation); USARhythms (Neurovascular rhythms). * Advanced to competing renewal as of 2023.
Tables
Table 1
Bibliometric and fiscal performance measures for each funding mechanism.
| Median Pubs per Award | Median Cites per Award | Median RCR per Pub | Median Pubs per $1M | Median Cites per $1M | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| eROH | 11 | 212 | 2.5 | 5 | 62 |
| ROH | 6 | 73 | 1.9 | 1 | 21 |
| TargetBCPP | 1 | 2 | 1.3 | 1 | 1 |
| TargetBCP | 4 | 48 | 1.7 | 2 | 14 |
| eTeamBCP | 9 | 132 | 1.5 | 3 | 38 |
| TeamBCP | 25 | 669 | 2.6 | 2 | 195 |
| TMM | 9 | 79 | 1.2 | 7 | 23 |
| Parent R01 | 9 | 191 | 1.1 | 5 | 117 |
Table 2
We report the total number, cost, and number of publications per funding stream for FY2014 through 2023.
| Team-research | ||
|---|---|---|
| eTeamBCP (U01) | TeamBCP (U19) | |
| Number awards | 40 | 22 |
| Total cost | $118.7M | $280.7M |
| Number publications * | 366 | 618 |
| Median annual total cost per award | $1.0M | $2.9 |
| Small project | ||
| TargetBCPP (R34) | TargetBCP (R01) | |
| Number awards | 60 | 137 |
| Total cost | $36.4M | $312.2M |
| Number publications* | 99 | 624 |
| Median annual total cost per award | $0.3M | $0.6M |
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Note this data is frozen based in 2023 and only includes publications published between 2014 and 2023. Please note that some projects are completed while others are not, which adds some variability to publications and the amount of money that has gone out the door (including if projects are multiyear-funded). Finally, when assigning publications to grants, NIH does not typically differentiate between new awards (type 1) and competing renewals (type 2), so for the purposes of publication calculations, type 2s are collapsed into one single project. They are counted separately for the number of awards.
-
*
Papers published from 2014 to 2023 only, some papers may be double counted between programs if more than one program contributed to the publication, but is not double counted within a program if more than one award contributed (i.e. if an eTeamBCP and a TeamBCP both are cited in one publication, the publication is counted under both programs; if two different TargetBCPP awards contribute to one publication, the publication is counted once under the program).
Additional files
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Supplementary file 1
Word Cloud from titles and abstracts of all BRAIN BCP awards.
As designed, Behavioral, Systems, and Computational Neuroscience are well represented.
- https://cdn.elifesciences.org/articles/106136/elife-106136-supp1-v1.pdf
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Supplementary file 2
GitHub Data on TMM Awards.
(A) TMM projects with the highest number of cumulative GitHub Stars that produced highly popular computational tools in the form of normative theories, predictive models, and computational algorithms. (B) Highest rated GitHub repositories from TMM awards. These highly popular repositories are supported by multiple projects and programs. Snapshot from November 2024.
- https://cdn.elifesciences.org/articles/106136/elife-106136-supp2-v1.pdf
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Supplementary file 3
Publications (PubMed Identifier [PMID]), per research track, from awards that have Altmetric scores above 600.
* Manuscripts that attest to early translational impact.
- https://cdn.elifesciences.org/articles/106136/elife-106136-supp3-v1.pdf
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Supplementary file 4
Sample quotations from an informal poll of IC-contributing Program Directors that work within the BRAIN Circuits Program Team.
- https://cdn.elifesciences.org/articles/106136/elife-106136-supp4-v1.docx
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MDAR checklist
- https://cdn.elifesciences.org/articles/106136/elife-106136-mdarchecklist1-v1.docx
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The NIH BRAIN Initiative’s impacts in systems and computational neuroscience and team-scale research 2014–2023
eLife 14:RP106136.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.106136.3
