NIH increases funding for BRAIN initiative to expand opioid study

The National Institutes of Health is once again investing in the BRAIN initiative, which will include new studies on opioids.

New funding of $ 220 million for 200 new fellowships has been awarded, bringing total program support for 2018 to more than $ 400 million, 50% more than the amount spent last year.

One of the key objectives of this new funding is to use the knowledge gained on the brain to help cope with the pain and opioid crisis, said NIH director Francis Collins, MD . "Brain diseases are among the biggest mysteries of modern medicine," he adds. "These projects will provide new tools and knowledge needed to find answers to some of the most challenging neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders."

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NIH hopes to build on the BRAIN Initiative's advances in finding new pain therapies that can include new imaging and somatic neurotechnologies to find non-addictive treatments for pain.

Other new initiatives include the creation of a wireless optical tomography coping system to scan the activity of the human brain; development of a non-invasive brain-computer interface system aimed at improving the lives of paralyzed patients; non-invasive brain stimulation tests for the treatment of schizophrenia, attention deficit disorders and other brain diseases; new tools to capture brain circuit views in action, biological electrodes automatically grow to record brain activity; and the creation of an indestructible hydrogel system – a way to control the release of drug delivery – to map neural circuits.

More than 100 research companies have received awards to support the projects of 500 researchers. Recent awards are available on the new NIH BRAIN Initiative website.