The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) is a part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). It conducts and funds research on brain and nervous system disorders and has a budget of just over US$2.03 billion. The mission of NINDS is "to reduce the burden of neurological disease—a burden borne by every age group, every segment of society, and people all over the world". NINDS has established two major branches for research: an extramural branch that funds studies outside the NIH, and an intramural branch that funds research inside the NIH. Most of NINDS' budget goes to fund extramural research. NINDS' basic science research focuses on studies of the fundamental biology of the brain and nervous system, genetics, neurodegeneration, learning and memory, motor control, brain repair, and synapses. NINDS also funds clinical research related to diseases and disorders of the brain and nervous system, e.g. AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injury, stroke, and traumatic brain injury.
Established in 1950 by the U. S. Congress as the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness to help handle the casualties of World War II, NINDS grew along with the NIH. During the 1950s and 1960s, NINDS and the NIH had strong Congressional support and received significant appropriations. However, this funding declined in 1968.
History
Impetus for creation
The NINDS was created in 1950 to study and treat the neurological and psychiatric casualties of World War II. Many service people had returned with serious brain injuries, nerve damage, and psychological trauma. According to one estimate, "neurologically disabled veterans in the postwar years accounted for about 25 percent of the patients in general hospitals and 10 percent of those in psychiatric hospitals". In addition, 1.7 million American men had been rejected for military service due to a neuropsychiatric condition or learning disorder. At the time, psychiatry and its focus on "emotional tensions due to interpersonal, social, and cultural maladjustments" held sway in US medicine, while neurology, with its focus on the inner workings of the brain, had fallen out of favor. During WWII, all of the administrative positions of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology held by the US armed services were filled by psychiatrists. After the war, a survey by the Veteran's Administration of the members of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology found that 48 were neurologists and 456 were psychiatrists.
Members of the research grants committee of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), which had been founded in 1949, contend that they also helped provide an impetus for the new institute, as when reviewing grant applications they saw a significant number of neurological projects and proposed a separate institute for them.
Creation
right|thumb|[[Mary Lasker helped Sen. Claude Pepper present the case to the government for a national institute for cancer, for heart disease, and for neurological disorders. She collected data and found experts.]]
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Blindness (NINDB), the original name for the NINDS, was officially established on November 22, 1950, three months after President Harry Truman signed the Omnibus Medical Research Act (Public Law 81-692) on August 15, 1950. The legislation had been passed with the efforts of Senator Claude Pepper, who was responsible for helping the majority of the NIH institutes get their start, wealthy New York entrepreneur Mary Lasker, and Fight for Sight founder Mildred Weisenfeld, who had retinitis pigmentosa.
NINDB was not conceived of entirely coherently at the beginning. For example, blindness was added because some concerned citizens raised the issue with Lasker who, in turn asked Congressman Andrew Biemiller to do so in Congress. He simply added it to the bill, being sympathetic with the cause since his mother was blind.
NINDB was "responsible for conducting and supporting research and training in the 200 neurological and sensory disorders that affected 20 million individuals in the United States and were 'the first cause of permanent crippling and the third cause of death.'"
In the beginning, the NINDB had an Advisory Council made of six medical professional and lay people, all appointed by the U. S. Surgeon General. They formulated the path taken by the institute and granted its funds.
The NINDB's first director, Pearce Bailey, was appointed on October 3, 1951, and came with experience from the Neuropsychiatry Division at Philadelphia Naval Hospital. However, until 1961, the NINDB and NIMH shared research facilities and scientists, often collaborating on projects.
1951–1968: Strong political alliances and adding stroke
left|thumb|Pearce Bailey, the first director of NINDB, was the son of [[Pearce Bailey, one of the founders of the New York Neurological Institute. In 1955, then U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy announced, to the organization United Cerebral Palsy, that the institute was "planning to launch an all-out attack against the dread spectre of cerebral palsy". By 1959, a study to look at how gestation affected cerebral palsy had been started. The new director of the NIH, James Shannon, a politically astute man who also had an ability to pick talented scientists, helped solidify what became "the golden years of science at NIH". With Shannon, Fogarty, Hill, and Lasker working together, the NIH's budget as a whole increased more than tenfold between 1955 and 1965. This directly benefited NINDB, as its budget rose and fell along with general budget.
Throughout the 1960s, under the directorship of Richard L. Masland, the NINDB sponsored the ground-breaking research of Carleton Gajdusek and Joseph Gibbs. Gajdusek eventually won a Nobel Prize for his work on kuru in New Guinea.
Stroke was added to the institute's mandate in the 1960s and in October 1968 the institute became the "National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke". The commission produced a report that resulted in a bill being passed in 1965 that established centers for the diseases across the country. In his history of the NINDS, Rowland explains that "authorities later doubted that they had much lasting impact on stroke theory or therapy." This example, he notes, "illustrates the tension between advocates of basic research and those who wanted immediate application".
The political alliance that between Shannon, Lasker, Fogarty, and Hill began to splinter at the end of the 1960s. In 1967 when he wrote a 20-year history of the NIH, Shannon did not mention Lasker's contributions. By 1968, Fogarty had died and Hill and Johnson had declined to run for reelection. With the election of Richard Nixon, the tone of research funding changed.
In general, according to Rowland, "there was a feeling that vision research was not being adequately at NINDB". In 1967, a bill to create a separate eye institute was drafted,
1968–1980
Starting in the late 1960s, the budget of the NIH as a whole was reduced, which affected NINDS. Training programs were cut. President Richard Nixon's administration directed the institutes to work more aggressively on applied research and projects that would directly affect patients.
2000s
The NINDS budget passed $1 billion for the first time in fiscal 2000; the bulk of the budget is dedicated to extramural research and investigator-initiated grants (intramural research accounts for about 10 percent of the total).
In December 2025, the NIH decided not to renew the contract of Walter Koroshetz, director of NINDS since 2015, despite a recommendation by an NIH review panel and an endorsement by NIH director Jay Bhattacharya. As a result, 40 neuroscience organizations, led by the American Academy of Neurology, sent a letter to members of Congress expressing "significant concern" and urging Congress to exercise closer oversight over leadership changes.
Mission
The mission of the NINDS, as stated on their website, is "to reduce the burden of neurological disease—a burden borne by every age group, every segment of society, and people all over the world".
Research
General
"Some important areas of NINDS basic research include: biology of the cells of the nervous system, brain and nervous system development, genetics of the brain, cognition and behavior, neurodegeneration, brain plasticity and repair, neural signaling, learning and memory, motor control and integration, sensory function, and neural channels, synapses, and circuits." to honor the late U. S. Senator Jacob K. Javits, "a strong advocate for support of research in a wide variety of disorders of the brain and nervous system" who had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Douglas G. Stuart was an early awardee among the over 600 of these up-to-seven-year awards granted from 1984 to date
Landis Award for Outstanding Mentorship
The Landis Award for Outstanding Mentorship is named after former NINDS Director Dr. Story Landis.
Structure
Director
Amy Bany Adams is serving as the acting director of NINDS. The Division itself is broken down into "program clusters" that are "organized around critical, cross-cutting scientific topics that hold great promise for advancing knowledge and reducing the burden of neurological disease". Scientists here do research in the "basic, translational, and clinical neurosciences", covering a wide range of topics, including "molecular biophysics, synapses and circuits, neuronal development, integrative neuroscience, brain imaging and neurological disorders".
{| class=wikitable style="text-align:center"
|-
!
!Portrait
!Director
!Took office
!Left office
!
|-
|1
|70px
|Pearce Bailey Jr.
|1951
|1959
|
|-
|2
|70px
|Richard L. Masland
|1959
|1968
|
|-
|3
|70px
|Edward F. MacNichol, Jr.
|September 1, 1968
|1973
|
|- bgcolor="#e6e6aa"
|acting
|rowspan="2" bgcolor="#ffffff"|70px
|rowspan="2" bgcolor="#ffffff"|Donald B. Tower
|May 1, 1973
|May 31, 1974
|
|-
|4
|May 31, 1974
|February 1, 1981
|
|-
|5
|70px
|Murray Goldstein
|December 23, 1982
|December 1993
|
|- bgcolor="#e6e6aa"
|acting
|70px
|Patricia A. Grady
|December 1993
|August 31, 1994
|
|-
|6
|70px
|Zach W. Hall
|September 1, 1994
|December 31, 1997
|
|- bgcolor="#e6e6aa"
|acting
|70px
|Audrey S. Penn
|January 1, 1998
|July 31, 1998
|
|-
|7
|70px
|Gerald Fischbach
|August 1, 1998
|January 31, 2001
|
|- bgcolor="#e6e6aa"
|acting
|70px
|Audrey S. Penn
|February 1, 2001
|August 31, 2003
|
|-
|8
|70px
|Story Landis
|September 1, 2003
|September 30, 2014
|
|- bgcolor="#e6e6aa"
|acting
|rowspan="2" bgcolor="#ffffff"|70px
|rowspan="2" bgcolor="#ffffff"|Walter J. Koroshetz
|October 1, 2014
|July 28, 2015
|
|-
|9
|July 29, 2015
|January 24, 2026
|