Neurosys - Neuroinformatics for Neural Systems

描述（由申请人提供）：几个主要的技术障碍阻碍了在基础和临床神经科学中回答基本问题的进展。 一个主要的障碍是缺乏有效的机制，神经科学家和临床医生与其他机构的同事分享他们的数据，并获得分布在整个神经科学研究界的大量数据资源。 这一障碍必须通过开发更强大和更容易获得的信息学工具来消除，以使我们能够探索我们神经系统的发育，结构组织和功能障碍。 造成这一“信息学”障碍的问题可以分为两大类：限制现有信息学工具能力的技术问题，以及阻止一般研究界使用这些工具的实际问题。 通过第一阶段人脑项目的资助，我们开发了一个原型数据库环境，解决了几个最重要的技术和实际问题。 这个软件环境，称为NeuroSys，使神经科学研究人员能够构建，维护和扩展他们自己的实验室数据库，增强他们与不同地点的合作者共享数据和分析工具的能力，并提供一个执行环境，在这个环境中，他们的数据查询结果可以直接发送到一个可扩展的高级数据分析和模拟工具列表中。 该项目的总体目标是扩展该原型系统的功能和通用性，在密集的beta测试的基础上完善该系统，并向一般科学界发布NeuroSys。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Several major technological barriers obstruct progress toward answering fundamental questions in basic and clinical neuroscience. One principal barrier is the lack of effective mechanisms for neuroscientists and clinicians to share their data with colleagues at other institutions, and to gain access to the vast resources of data that are distributed throughout the neuroscience research community. This barrier must be removed by the development of more powerful and accessible informatics tools to enable our exploration of the development, structural organization and dysfunction of our nervous system. The problems contributing to this 'informatics' barrier can be subdivided into two general categories: technical problems which limit the capabilities of existing informatics tools, and practical problems which prevent the use of those tools by the general research community. Through funding from a Phase I Human Brain Project grant, we have developed a prototype database environment that solves several of the most significant technical and practical problems. This software environment, called NeuroSys, enables neuroscience researchers to construct, maintain and extend their own in-lab databases, enhances their ability to share data and analysis tools with their collaborators at different sites, and provides an execution environment where query results on their data can be sent directly into an expandable list of advanced data analysis and simulation tools. The general goals of this project are to extend the capabilities and general utility of this prototype system, to refine the system based on intensive beta testing, and to release NeuroSys to the general scientific community.