Request for Proposals: The Science of Perception Box

The grant funds will be used by recipients to support research to develop relevant techniques and interventions to expand the walls of people’s Perception Box, to measure the effectiveness of such techniques and interventions for neurotypicals and/or clinically defined populations and to track their basis in the brain using appropriate tools.

Perception Box is a powerful metaphor they use to describe how a person’s perception is skewed by various factors such as beliefs, biases, and narratives. It relates to the architecture of the mind that all humans, and indeed, all conscious creatures, are constrained by. They each live in the own Perception Box, a box whose walls are invisible and unbreakable, as they can only experience what the neural circuitry permits the mind to experience. These walls, or constraints, become the filter through which they interpret everyone and everything. This ineluctable fact is true of every sentient being, each adapted to their niche, and so, as a consequence, each with their own, distinct, Perception Box. They like to use this term as it encompasses the entire construct of the mind that they are used to calling ‘reality’.

Key Features

• Applicants can seek funding for up to three consecutive years with funding of up to US$900,000. This sum includes a maximum amount of 15% overhead.
• To help applicants throughout the process, they will host webinars at key stages. Webinars will be recorded to accommodate applicants from different time zones.
• In recognition that external review scores are an essential but imperfect predictor of project quality, they will include a lottery-style selection among the top ranked full proposals (in which proposals will be randomly selected from the top-ranked proposals before being presented for final approval).

Criteria

• All Proposals must be submitted in English.
• Grants can only be awarded to a recognized Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3) medical schools, colleges, universities, or not-for-profit research organizations and, to the extent permissible pursuant to the Internal Revenue Code, to similar organizations located within or outside the United States even if such organization are not recognized as Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3) organizations. Applications will be considered from any country except for those on the US’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctions list.
• All proposals will be screened against the financial compliance criteria. They may require applicants to submit more information if needed. If an extended screening is required, then the review and processing timeline for that proposal may be extended.
• The Principal Investigator should be a clinical, applied, or basic science researcher at the Applicant Institution with a MD, PhD, or an equivalent degree.
• The research should be focused on the discovery or development of tools and interventions to help expand the walls of people’s Perception Box, to measure the effectiveness of these tools and interventions and to track the effects of these on the minds, behaviors, and brains of subjects.
• This RFP is intended for scientific research related to humans. Projects that include philosophical enquiry, mathematical models, laboratory animals, or in vitro experiments will be expected to provide suitable justification for a grant award.

For more information, visit Tiny Blue Dot Foundation.