UK Advanced Research and Invention Agency programme aims to find tools for treating brain disorders
The Advanced Research and Invention Agency is now accepting full proposals for its neurotechnologies programme.
On 12 August Aria announced that the programme—Precision Neurotechnologies—was open for full proposals until 9 September, having previously elicited short concept papers from researchers. The two-step process is intended to make the application process more efficient.
Backed by £69 million, the programme from the UK funder aims to find new methods to understand, identify and treat neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders.
‘Next-generation precision’
Aria wants researchers and innovators to submit proposals to develop a “suite of next-generation precision neurotechnologies to enable circuit-level access to the central nervous system, with cell-type specificity and across distributed macro- and micro-brain circuits”.
When combined with advanced computation simulators, these technologies should be able to “unlock entirely new therapeutic capabilities that are not possible with existing approaches”.
Proposals should also consider factors critical to the adoption of these technologies, with the aim to develop concrete and actionable recommendations for the wider neurotechnology community.
Treating brain disorders
Designed by programme director Jacques Carolan, an applied physicist and neuroscientist, Precision Neurotechnologies is part of Aria’s Scalable Neural Interfaces ‘opportunity space’, supporting the creation of new tools to react with the human brain.
Aria describes opportunity spaces as areas its managers think are likely to yield breakthroughs through one or more dedicated funding programmes.
Aria said its goal for the programme is to combine engineering biology and hardware to “treat many of the complex and devastating brain disorders affecting individuals and communities worldwide”.