About the Grant

This innovative 4-year project will convene a national Working Group of top neuroethics, neurolaw, and neuroscience experts to conduct empirical research and generate evidence-based consensus recommendations for the ethical conduct of research using highly portable, cloud-enabled MRI with new and diverse populations in field settings. Highly-portable MRI, a transformative technology supported by the NIH BRAIN Initiative, will allow researchers to conduct population-based neuroscience research and will accelerate research on brain biomarkers. As portable MRI develops quickly, guidance is urgently needed on unresolved ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI). This project builds on two NIH Administrative Supplements that have preliminarily identified the most pressing unresolved ELSI issues (“​Imaging Human Brain Function with Minimal Mobility Restrictions – Supplement – Neuroethics”; “Imaging Human Brain Function with Minimal Mobility Restrictions: Administrative Supplement for Research on Bioethical Issues”).

This project is co-led by three Principal Investigators: Frances Lawrenz (Univ. of Minnesota), Francis Shen (Harvard), and Susan Wolf (Univ. of Minnesota). Please send inquiries about the work of this project and other questions here. For additional project information, please visit the University of Minnesota Grants & Research page about the project here.

Project Sponsor: National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health Award Amount: $1,597,154 Award Number: RF1MH123698 Project Dates: August 7, 2020 - August 6, 2024