PAR-25-272-Full-Announcement.html

This is a full announcement document (PAR-25-272) for a National Institutes of Health R21 grant opportunity focused on developing new approaches for measuring brain changes across longer timespans. The funding aims to advance understanding of brain development and aging through innovative measurement techniques, with applications open to a wide range of applicants including higher education institutions, nonprofits, businesses, and governmental organizations.

The grant spans three federal programs: Child Health and Human Development Extramural Research (93.865), Cancer Biology Research (93.396), and Aging Research (93.866). It seeks multidisciplinary research proposals for studying brain activity, connectivity, genomics, and neurodevelopment across the lifespan, including both healthy participants and clinical groups with cognitive, motor, or affective challenges. As an R21 mechanism, this is designated as a high-risk, high-reward opportunity specifically intended for exploratory research that may lack preliminary data or require additional preliminary work. Research can encompass various levels of analysis from genetics and single cells to neural population patterns and connectomics.