New Approaches for Measuring Brain Changes Across Longer Timespans (R21 Clinical Trial Optional) | PAR 25 272

Opportunity Information: Apply for PAR 25 272

New Approaches for Measuring Brain Changes Across Longer Timespans (R21 Clinical Trial Optional), Funding Opportunity Number PAR-25-272, is a National Institutes of Health (NIH) discretionary grant program designed to spark high-risk, high-reward research that improves how scientists measure brain changes over long periods of time. The core emphasis is on developing exploratory, highly novel methods or creatively repurposing existing tools to capture brain activity, brain connectivity, genomics, and other biological or functional features across broad stretches of the lifespan. The motivation behind the opportunity is practical and scientific: many measures of the brain work well over short intervals, but predicting later outcomes (in adolescence, adulthood, or older age) often requires better repeated measures that remain meaningful across longer epochs of development and aging.

The scientific goal is to deepen understanding of how the brain changes from early neurodevelopment through aging, including how early-life brain features and experiences may shape later health and disease risk. NIH is encouraging applications that can make longitudinal research more powerful by improving measurement stability, sensitivity, and interpretability when data are collected repeatedly across years or decades. In other words, the opportunity is not only about collecting more data, but about advancing the underlying approaches so that changes observed over time can be linked more confidently to later cognitive, emotional, motor, or clinical outcomes.

This announcement is intentionally broad about what kinds of brain-related measures and scales are of interest. Projects may focus on longitudinal neuroanatomical change, functional dynamics, or multilevel biology, ranging from genetics and genomics to single-cell approaches, connectomics, and neural population activity patterns. The solicitation explicitly welcomes multidisciplinary work, reflecting the reality that tracking brain changes across long timespans often requires teams that combine neuroscience, engineering, computational methods, statistics, imaging, molecular biology, clinical expertise, and developmental science. Because this is an R21 mechanism, the program is particularly aimed at early-stage, exploratory concepts that may not yet have extensive preliminary data, or that need additional proof-of-concept data before a larger, confirmatory study is feasible.

In terms of study populations, the opportunity supports a wide range of research designs and subjects. Applications may involve healthy human participants of any age, as well as targeted clinical or at-risk groups, including people who experience cognitive challenges, motor difficulties, or problems with affective regulation. Animal studies are also permitted when they address these domains of function and contribute to the broader aim of understanding longitudinal brain change. The “Clinical Trial Optional” label indicates that applicants can propose clinical trials if appropriate, but a clinical trial is not required; projects can be observational, methodological, technological, or translational depending on the innovation being proposed.

Eligibility is expansive, which aligns with the program’s interest in bringing in new ideas from many sectors. Eligible applicants include a wide range of government entities (state, county, city or township, special district governments), independent school districts, public and state-controlled and private institutions of higher education, and Native American tribal governments (federally recognized) as well as tribal organizations that are not federally recognized. Nonprofits with or without 501(c)(3) status are eligible, as are public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, for-profit organizations (other than small businesses), and small businesses. The opportunity also highlights additional eligible applicant types such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-serving Institutions, Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs), Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions, and Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs), along with faith-based or community-based organizations, eligible federal agencies, regional organizations, U.S. territories or possessions, and even non-U.S. (foreign) organizations.

Administrative details from the source information include that the sponsoring agency is the National Institutes of Health, the funding instrument is a grant, and the activity categories fall under Education, Health, Income Security and Social Services. The CFDA numbers associated with the opportunity are 93.396, 93.865, and 93.866. The posting shows an original closing date of 2027-05-07 and a creation date of 2024-11-25. Award ceiling and expected award counts are not specified in the provided data, which is common for some NIH announcements where budgets depend on project scope and institute participation. Overall, the opportunity is aimed at pushing measurement science forward so that the field can track meaningful brain changes across longer timespans and, ultimately, improve the ability to forecast later-life outcomes from earlier-life neurobiological and functional signals.

• The National Institutes of Health in the education, health, income security and social services sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "New Approaches for Measuring Brain Changes Across Longer Timespans (R21 Clinical Trial Optional)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.396, 93.865, 93.866.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2024-11-25.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2027-05-07.
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Independent school districts, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, For-profit organizations other than small businesses, Small businesses, Others.

Apply for PAR 25 272

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