US-German Data Sharing: Integrating Distributed Data Resources to Enable New Research Approaches in Neuroscience

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This project seeks to develop new methods of describing and managing neuroscience data in order to accelerate scientific progress in many fields of neuroscience and deepen understanding of the brain. The project will produce software tools to enable annotation and integration of distributed data and help leverage the wealth of data emerging from current large-scale projects such as the Human Brain Project in Europe and the BRAIN Initiative in the US. These results will impact medical application areas such as brain machine interfaces, devices for sensor prosthetics and also application areas such as computer vision. Further, the methods developed might be generalizable to other domains of biology and medicine where traditional rigid approaches for organizing data are inapplicable. This could lead to the discovery of causes and treatments of diseases that would not have been made otherwise.Neurophysiology data, which contain recordings of brain activity, are becoming more commonly shared on the web but they are still very hard to use. To improve the usability of shared neurophysiology data sets, a standardized and expandable system will be developed for annotating the data with metadata required for their understanding. Furthermore, semantic web technology will be employed to represent, index, and integrate data and metadata, across distributed locations on the web. Improving the organization of metadata for shared neurophysiology data will be key for enabling studies that integrate across data sets, such as new types of meta-analyses or data mining methods. This project builds on existing online resources for neurophysiology data created by the project partners, CRCNS.org and G-NODE.org, and on pervious work by the INCF neurophysiology data sharing task force. Training of international students and researchers in annual summer courses at UC Berkeley and LMU Munich will improve career opportunities that allow individuals across disciplines to make discoveries and advancements in neuroscience. A companion project is being funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany (BMBF).