Reconstructions and Representations of Cerebral Cortex

描述（由申请人提供）：神经科学家面临着关于健康和疾病中大脑结构、功能和发育的大量实验数据。为了帮助应对这一洪水，本项目旨在为神经科学界提供(i)一套集成良好的软件工具，用于可视化、分析、访问和交流有关大脑和小脑皮层的信息；（ii）一套基于表面的地图集，提供关于人类、猴子和啮齿动物皮层的信息汇编。一个目标是实现一个统一的软件应用程序（Caret），它将执行全自动分割（捕捉个体大脑皮层的形状），以及多个基于表面的分析阶段。这些分析将包括生成皮质平面图和球形图，识别皮质沟，绘制皮质厚度，并将个体登记到地图集图中。第二个目标是通过整合强大的搜索功能和改进的在线和离线搜索结果可视化方法来增强Surface Management System （sum）数据库。sum将是一个分布式数据库网络，它允许具有多个安全级别的本地文件存储以及访问中央sum存储库。第三个目标是改进从一个大脑半球到另一个大脑半球的基于表面的注册方法，以便更好地补偿物种内的个体差异，并提供改进的方法来进行物种间的比较。第四个目标是将来自各种来源的实验数据扩展到人类、猕猴、大鼠和小鼠大脑和小脑皮层的基于表面的地图集。一个主要的焦点将是在猴子和人类皮层的视觉区域的概率地图的发展。这些总体目标的实现将使世界各地的神经科学家能够以比目前更容易和更灵活的方式获得关于大脑和小脑皮层的多种实验信息。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Neuroscientists are faced with a torrent of experimental data about the structure, function, and development of the brain in health and disease. To aid in coping with this flood, the present project aims to provide the neuroscience community with (i) a well-integrated set of software tools for visualizing, analyzing, accessing, and communicating information about the cerebral and cerebellar cortex and (ii) a set of surface-based atlases that provide a compendium of information about human, monkey and rodent cortex. One objective is to implement a unified software application (Caret) that will carry out fully automated segmentation (to capture the shape of the cortex in individual brains), plus multiple stages of surface-based analysis. These analyses will include generating cortical flat maps and spherical maps, identifying cortical sulci, mapping cortical thickness, and registering individuals to the atlas map. A second objective is to enhance the Surface Management System (SuMS) database, by incorporating powerful search capabilities, and by improved methods for visualizing search results, both online and offline. SuMS will be a distributed database network that allows local file storage with multiple security levels as well as access to the central SuMS repository. A third objective is to improve the methods for surface-based registration of one cerebral hemisphere to another, in order to better compensate for individual variability within a species and to provide improved methods for making comparisons across species. A fourth objective is to expand the mapping of experimental data from a variety of sources onto surface-based atlases of human, macaque, rat, and mouse cerebral and cerebellar cortex. A major focus will be on the development of probabilistic maps of visual areas in monkey and human cortex. Attainment of these overall objectives will allow neuroscientists everywhere to access many types of experimental information about cerebral and cerebellar cortex with much greater ease and flexibility than is currently possible.