Overview
Brief Introduction to the German Node
within the International Neuroinformatics Coordination Facility
Despite the great success of neuroscience over the last decades, there
is no doubt that we are far from understanding the human brain. This
concerns all levels of neural processes – from the regulation of
molecular pathways, the dynamics of single synapses, and the
information processing of small neural networks to the orchestrated
function of the entire brain. As new studies are initiated on the basis
of current interpretations of available data, long-term progress in the
neurosciences will crucially depend on the broad availability of
high-quality data (including pre-processed data as well as the
underlying raw data) and high-quality data-analysis tools. However,
many of today's commercial recording tools are based on highly
individual and proprietary data formats and come only with limited and
typically closed-source software tools for data mining and analysis.
This shortcoming severely complicates the access, storage, analysis and
sharing of neuroscientific data and thus slows down the future
development of brain research.
As a central element of the German Neuroinformatics Node (G-Node) within INCF a novel software and hardware infrastructure will therefore be developed that eases the acquisition, storage and analysis of experimental data. We will focus on cellular and systems neurophysiology
for a number of reasons. First, the lack of common data standards is
rather severe in this field; as a consequence, successful
standardizations could have an enormous impact. Second, the complexity
of these tasks goes beyond the capability of a single lab – one of the
reasons for the slow progress seen so far – but can be tackled through
a concerted effort. Third, without a thorough quantitative
understanding of cellular and systems neurophysiology, there is no
solid foundation for computational neuroscience and brain theory. In
addition, the methodology and tools developed within the project could
later also be used in other neuroscience areas. Especially early in the
project, however, it will be helpful to focus on a well-defined task
and research community to quickly reach critical mass.
By directly addressing a key problem faced by a specific group of
experimental and theoretical neuroscientists, the G-Node will support
ongoing and future experiments in cellular and systems neurophysiology,
encourage the standardization of data formats as well as analysis tools
and thus directly facilitate the cooperation within and between
different labs. We do expect that the G-Node, including its services as
general neuroscience community site and its data archive functionality,
will also attract a large group of neuroscientists that do not yet have
close links to computational approaches or neuroinformatics. To foster
international cooperation, the project will be carried out in close
cooperation with the INCF secretariat and interested INCF nodes.
Following the open-source concept of the forerunner Neuroinformatics
Portal all tools developed within the G-Node will be made freely
available to the national and international community. Together, these
measures will incorporate the technological opportunities of global
neuroinformatics into everyday neurophysiological routine and thus help
establish a new scientific culture.
For a detailed description, see our article in a special issue of Neural Networks:
G-Node review paper
