2,525 research outputs found
The INCF Digital Atlasing Program: Report on Digital Atlasing Standards in the Rodent Brain
The goal of the INCF Digital Atlasing Program is to provide the vision and direction necessary to make the rapidly growing collection of multidimensional data of the rodent brain (images, gene expression, etc.) widely accessible and usable to the international research community. This Digital Brain Atlasing Standards Task Force was formed in May 2008 to investigate the state of rodent brain digital atlasing, and formulate standards, guidelines, and policy recommendations.

Our first objective has been the preparation of a detailed document that includes the vision and specific description of an infrastructure, systems and methods capable of serving the scientific goals of the community, as well as practical issues for achieving
the goals. This report builds on the 1st INCF Workshop on Mouse and Rat Brain Digital Atlasing Systems (Boline et al., 2007, _Nature Preceedings_, doi:10.1038/npre.2007.1046.1) and includes a more detailed analysis of both the current state and desired state of digital atlasing along with specific recommendations for achieving these goals
1st INCF Workshop on Sustainability of Neuroscience Databases
The goal of the workshop was to discuss issues related to the sustainability of neuroscience databases, identify problems and propose solutions, and formulate recommendations to the INCF. The report summarizes the discussions of invited participants from the neuroinformatics community as well as from other disciplines where sustainability issues have already been approached. The recommendations for the INCF involve rating, ranking, and supporting database sustainability
The Scalable Brain Atlas: instant web-based access to public brain atlases and related content
The Scalable Brain Atlas (SBA) is a collection of web services that provide
unified access to a large collection of brain atlas templates for different
species. Its main component is an atlas viewer that displays brain atlas data
as a stack of slices in which stereotaxic coordinates and brain regions can be
selected. These are subsequently used to launch web queries to resources that
require coordinates or region names as input. It supports plugins which run
inside the viewer and respond when a new slice, coordinate or region is
selected. It contains 20 atlas templates in six species, and plugins to compute
coordinate transformations, display anatomical connectivity and fiducial
points, and retrieve properties, descriptions, definitions and 3d
reconstructions of brain regions. The ambition of SBA is to provide a unified
representation of all publicly available brain atlases directly in the web
browser, while remaining a responsive and light weight resource that
specializes in atlas comparisons, searches, coordinate transformations and
interactive displays.Comment: Rolf K\"otter sadly passed away on June 9th, 2010. He co-initiated
this project and played a crucial role in the design and quality assurance of
the Scalable Brain Atla
Computational neuroanatomy and co-expression of genes in the adult mouse brain, analysis tools for the Allen Brain Atlas
We review quantitative methods and software developed to analyze
genome-scale, brain-wide spatially-mapped gene-expression data. We expose new
methods based on the underlying high-dimensional geometry of voxel space and
gene space, and on simulations of the distribution of co-expression networks of
a given size. We apply them to the Allen Atlas of the adult mouse brain, and to
the co-expression network of a set of genes related to nicotine addiction
retrieved from the NicSNP database. The computational methods are implemented
in {\ttfamily{BrainGeneExpressionAnalysis}}, a Matlab toolbox available for
download.Comment: 25 pages, 8 figures, accepted in Quantitative Biology (2012) 000
A proposal for a coordinated effort for the determination of brainwide neuroanatomical connectivity in model organisms at a mesoscopic scale
In this era of complete genomes, our knowledge of neuroanatomical circuitry
remains surprisingly sparse. Such knowledge is however critical both for basic
and clinical research into brain function. Here we advocate for a concerted
effort to fill this gap, through systematic, experimental mapping of neural
circuits at a mesoscopic scale of resolution suitable for comprehensive,
brain-wide coverage, using injections of tracers or viral vectors. We detail
the scientific and medical rationale and briefly review existing knowledge and
experimental techniques. We define a set of desiderata, including brain-wide
coverage; validated and extensible experimental techniques suitable for
standardization and automation; centralized, open access data repository;
compatibility with existing resources, and tractability with current
informatics technology. We discuss a hypothetical but tractable plan for mouse,
additional efforts for the macaque, and technique development for human. We
estimate that the mouse connectivity project could be completed within five
years with a comparatively modest budget.Comment: 41 page
1st INCF Workshop on Genetic Animal Models for Brain Diseases
The INCF Secretariat organized a workshop to focus on the “role of neuroinformatics in the processes of building, evaluating, and using genetic animal models for brain diseases” in Stockholm, December 13–14, 2009. Eight scientists specialized in the fields of neuroinformatics, database, ontologies, and brain disease participated together with two representatives of the National Institutes of Health and the European Union, as well as three observers of the national INCF nodes of Norway, Poland, and the United Kingdom
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