The Human Brain Project (Neuroinformatics): Phase I & Phase II

神经科学的一个重大挑战是理解细胞和网络水平上信息处理的生物学基础。 持续进步的一个主要技术障碍是缺乏足够的信息学和分析工具来探索复杂神经回路的结构组织，发现和理解神经集合的涌现特性，制定关于神经计算的定量假设，并通过实验测试这些假设。 这些科学家开发了一个原型数据库系统，提供了许多所需的功能，并使用这个软件系统来研究神经编码的机制。 这里提出的工作的总体目标是扩展这个原型系统的能力和一般效用，接口的数据库与几个额外的工具，用于分析结构和时间序列数据，并使远程合作者之间更有效的数据共享。 核心的信息学和神经科学研究将由蒙大拿州立大学的一组研究人员进行。 还与其他几个研究机构的研究人员建立了合作关系，以确保该系统与其他数据收集和分析工具的互操作性，并促进该系统的测试和完善。 PI和合作研究者都在各种准备工作中研究细胞和网络水平上感觉处理的动态方面，包括蟋蟀，猫和猴子的视觉系统。 研究人员都有以下一般神经科学研究目标：a）理解神经系综中的时空活动模式与它们传达的信息之间的关系，B）理解在一个处理阶段的时空模式如何在下一个处理阶段被解码，c）理解如何对解码的形态学、突触连接性、和神经元的内在生物物理特性。 这里开发的软件工具将应用于这些正在进行的研究，使这些研究项目的广度，深度，严谨性和进展速度大幅增加。 神经科学研究将反过来为信息学工具的改进、推广和扩展提供严格的基础。

A grand challenge in neuroscience is to understand the biological basis of information processing at the cellular and network levels. One major technology barrier to continuing progress is the lack of adequate informatics and analysis tools to enable exploration of the structural organization of complex neural circuits, the discovery and understanding of emergent properties of neural ensembles, the formulation of quantitative hypotheses about neural computation, and the testing of those hypotheses experimentally. These scientists have developed a prototype database system that provides many of the needed capabilities, and have used this software system to study mechanisms underlying neural encoding. The general goals of the work proposed here are to extend the capabilities and general utility of this prototype system, to interface the database with several additional tools for the analysis of structural and time-series data, and to enable more effective data sharing between remote collaborators. The core informatics and neuroscience research will be carried out by a group of researchers at Montana State University. Collaborations have also been established with researchers at several other research institutions, to insure interoperability of this system with other data collections and analysis tools and to facilitate the testing and refinement of this system. The PI and co-investigators all study dynamic aspects of sensory processing at the cellular and network levels in a variety of preparations, including the cricket, cat, and monkey visual systems. The researchers all share the following general neuroscience research aims: a) to understand the relationships between spatio-temporal activity patterns in neural ensembles and the information they convey, b) to understand how the spatio-temporal patterns at one processing stage are decoded at the next processing stage, c) to understand how computations are carried out on that decoded morphology, synaptic connectivity, and intrinsic biophysical characteristics of the neurons in the ensembles. The software tools developed here will be applied to these ongoing studies, enabling a substantial increase in the breadth, depth, rigor, and rate of progress of those research projects. That neuroscience research will, in turn, provide a rigorous basis for the refinement, generalization and extension of the informatics tools.