The International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility: Cyber-infrastructure for Global Neuroinformatics

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0733492BjaalieThis non-research award provides four years of U.S. support for membership in the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF), a multilateral organization headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. INCF is a coordinated, international scientific effort to create a portal for navigation and integration of distributed resources within different domains of neurosciences. Thirteen nations so far (Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States) and the European Commission are members. The new services provided by INCF will contribute to improved access and integration of data and transfer of knowledge between levels of organization, and a more rapid development of realistic models of brain functions. INCF's Neuroinformation Community Portal will provide an interoperable network of neuroscience databases and related software tools. In addition, INCF will offer tested and validated work flows, with defined inputs and outputs, and tutorials and instructions for making use of such work flows for data analysis. The initial four years will concentrate on large-scale modeling of the nervous system, mouse and rat brain digital atlasing, integration of fMRI data resource, and neuroanotomical nomenclature and taxonomy. Broader Impacts: Brain and nervous system studies for the long-term benefit of society require integration of heterogeneous and complex data collected at multiple levels of investigation. That capability is provided by INCF, a critical global network to advance knowledge and understanding of basic brain functions, devastating diseases of the nervous system, and neural processing as applied to information sciences and development of artificial systems. The INCF is a novel, internationally-funded infrastructure taking advantage of multiple levels of expertise in neuroinformatics - across boundaries, scientific domains, private and public sectors, methodologies and approaches.