Assistance program
21st Century Cures Act - Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies
$477.5 Million committed in FY2021–FY2026
- Agency
- National Institutes of Health, Health and Human Services, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants (Cooperative Agreements)
- CFDA number
- 93.372
- What it does
- To provide extramural research support for the Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies®?(BRAIN) Initiative’s aim of revolutionizing our understanding of the brain and its function in unprecedented detail. The NIH BRAIN Initiative’s focus is foundational development of new technologies and tools to map, monitor, and modulate brain circuits in model systems and humans – toward the ultimate goal of treating and curing human brain disorders. BRAIN Initiative research adheres to open, ethical, and inclusive science – and requires diverse expertise across all domains. BRAIN-supported research areas include comprehensive cataloguing, mapping, accessing and characterization of brain cell types ; probing neural circuits that interact and produce behavior, cognition, and emotion; developing and employing new ?technologies to monitor function and connectivity of synapses, circuits, and whole brains; partnering with human research participants, including ?utilizing neurotechnologies in first-in-human clinical studies, to study the human brain in the context of brain injury and brain disorders; and establishing data-sharing platforms and computational models that help decode brain processes and functions. Within these scientific focus areas, the Initiative supports research project grants, cooperative agreements, workforce development awards and Small Business Innovation Research awards. Research supported by the Initiative has a strong commitment to broad dissemination of newly developed technologies, and to considering neuroethical issues related to studying the human brain and the neuroscience advances that follow from this research. New frontiers for BRAIN research will adhere to, and build on, what has been learned to date and adapt to the rapidly changing scientific landscape and neuroscience ecosystem.
- Who benefits
- U.S. Territories, Small business, Profit organization, Private nonprofit institution/organization, Quasi-public nonprofit organization, Other private institution/organization, Native American Organizations, Health Professional, Student/Trainee, Graduate Student, Scientist/Researchers, State, U.S. Citizen, Local, Public nonprofit institution/organization, Other public institution/organization, Federally Recognized Indian Tribal Governments, Health professionals, graduate students, health professional students, scientists, and researchers.
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments
