Behavioral Testing and Clinical Assessment Core improves how we study how people think and feel
Official title: Behavioral Testing and Clinical Assessment Core (B)
Funded at Princeton University · NIH-11373053 · Data updated 2026-11-12
This grant supports a central hub that makes human-subject research easier and more reliable for studying how people infer hidden causes in health and mental illness.
Quick facts
| Grant type | NIH-funded research |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | Princeton University NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Princeton, UNITED STATES) |
| Project start | August 12, 2024 |
| Project end | July 31, 2029 |
| Funding year | 2026 |
| Award (this year) | $290,829 |
| NIH project number | 5P50MH136296-03 |
| Project ID | NIH-11373053 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
Individuals with mental health concerns or related cognitive symptoms, as well as healthy volunteers, who can participate in remote behavioral and clinical assessments.
✕Less likely to help
Some participants may not directly benefit while contributing to broader understanding or if their particular condition is not the focus of the examining tasks.
What this research studies
Core B provides a coordinated framework to conduct behavioral testing and clinical assessments for multiple projects that examine how people categorize information, segment events, and learn or unlearn through probabilistic decisions. It aims to recruit diverse participants, deploy remote testing software, and ensure consistent measurement of individual cognitive and mental health profiles. The work builds on a shared software platform to run remote experiments and to capture data that reflect each person’s latent cause inference phenotype alongside their clinical symptoms. By streamlining recruitment and standardizing evaluations, this core seeks to improve the quality and speed of findings that could inform future treatments. The effort is centered at Princeton University under the leadership of Dr. Anna Borisova Konova and collaborators, with a focus on human subjects across clinical and non-clinical groups.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, patients could benefit from better-behaved and more accurate assessments that support personalized understanding and treatment of mental health conditions.
How similar studies have gone: Prior work with harmonized behavioral assessment cores has improved data quality and cross-site consistency in human subjects research.
Where this research is happening
-
Princeton University
Princeton, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Konova, Anna Borisova — Princeton University
- Study coordinator: Konova, Anna Borisova
Related research
Other NIH-funded projects on the same topics.
-
How neuropeptides could influence aging and Alzheimer’s risk
Researchers at Princeton are studying whether changing brain signaling chemicals called neuropeptides can extend healthy aging and reduce Alzheimer’s-related brain changes, with a focus on people at risk for Alzheimer’s disease dementia.
-
Sleep and aging brain resilience in a short-lived vertebrate model
A young-aged-friendly project explores how sleep quality affects brain health during aging, using a tiny, fast-lived fish model to understand Alzheimer’s-related changes.
-
How hepatitis C adapts to other species to help develop vaccines
Researchers are making a mouse-friendly version of hepatitis C so scientists can better test vaccines and understand the virus for people living with or at risk of hepatitis C.
-
Mapping how cells push and pull in living tissues
A science project at Princeton aims to map and control the forces between cells in 3D tissues to better understand cancer, development, and healing, with potential benefits for patients in the future.
-
Understanding how brain signals give rise to thinking using brain-wide recordings
Researchers at Princeton are developing new brain theories and computer tools to understand how complex neural signals relate to thinking and behavior.
-
Cancer metabolism revealed through mass spectrometry and isotope tracing
A scientist team at Princeton will study how cancer cells use nutrients by analyzing metabolites with advanced mass spectrometry and labeled tracers.
About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.