Research into the human brain and its diseases is one of the key challenges of our century, since among the many diseases affecting health, disorders of the brain are major causes for impaired quality of life. Despite some progress in understanding the molecular mechanisms of the various neurological and psychiatric disorders, research is far from being able to offer solutions how to conquer them and the development of curative treatments or prevention strategies has not been very successful. Thus, a concerted effort of research groups and the organisations funding them is needed to reach the long term goal of curing patients with disorders of the brain and nervous system and helping their relatives.Due to the importance of research into the area of brain diseases, a variety of independent national and regional funding programmes exist in most countries. This contributes to fragmentation of available financial resources, to a lack of synergistic approaches and to duplication of efforts in the funding bodies. The proposed ERA-NET NEURON II aims to coordinate national and regional programmes for disease-related neuroscience research in 21 participant funding organisations across 16 European Member States, Candidate and Associated countries, and Canada. Extending the collaboration beyond the European Research Area into North America reflects the global dimension of brain research and adds even more to the effectiveness of NEURON. The ERA-NET will serve as a platform of programme opening for participating funding agencies and ministries and coordinate high quality research by funding research groups originating from the NEURON II partner countries.NEURON II will build on the achievements of its predecessor ERA-NET NEURON. It will launch a series of transnational joint calls for proposals and address new ambitious goals by developing strategies towards a self-sustainable network with a long term perspective.