RECONSTRUCTIONS AND REPRESENTATIONS OF CEREBRAL CORTEX

描述（由申请人提供）：神经科学家面临着大量关于健康和疾病中大脑结构和功能的实验数据。 这些信息大部分都与大脑皮层和小脑皮层有关，这是人类大脑的主要结构。 这些是具有挑战性的研究，因为它们是高度复杂的片状结构，并且从一个个体到下一个个体变化很大。 我们提出了一套主要的增强我们现有的一套神经信息学软件工具的可视化，分析和数据挖掘，促进大脑和小脑皮层的研究。 该资源的关键组成部分包括：（i）人类和非人类灵长类动物的基于表面的地图集，其捕获皮质卷积的形状并表示群体平均值以及个体变异性;（ii）与在线可视化工具（WebCaret）耦合的神经成像数据数据库（SumsDB）;以及（iii）提供多种分析和可视化功能的脑映射软件应用程序（Caret）。 我们的地图集工作将集中在人类大脑皮层，其中包含一个复杂但知之甚少的不同区域的马赛克（总共100-200）。 我们将在SumsDB中生成一个皮质区的“库”，代表许多不同的皮质区地图，使用各种方法进行识别，并将其全部注册到一个通用的图谱框架中。 这个图书馆将作为一个有价值的和容易访问的参考收集神经科学家研究功能定位。 我们还将生成与正常个体和各种疾病条件下的皮质功能和结构相关的已发表实验数据库。 这些库将促进交叉研究比较，揭示每个皮质区域的一致功能特征和附近区域之间的功能差异。 我们将把人类大脑皮层的功能组织与黑猩猩和猕猴的大脑皮层进行比较。 这将提供关于哪些皮层区域在每个物种中具有共同的进化起源的见解，哪些区域在人类谱系中扩大了尺寸，以及是否存在人类中完全不存在于其他灵长类物种中的皮层区域。 最后，我们将在Caret软件中实现几个主要的增强功能。 这将包括更有效和更敏感的表征正常结构和功能以及疾病条件下的皮质异常的方法。 这些目标的成功实现将为神经科学家提供一套强大而灵活的工具，用于分析、可视化、共享和访问广泛的实验数据，从而加速更好地理解、诊断和治疗许多大脑疾病的努力。 公共卫生相关性：该项目将提供改进的大脑映射方法，用于表征各种神经和精神疾病中大脑的结构和功能异常。 它还将提供一个神经成像数据库和强大的数据挖掘方法，方便获得大量有关大脑结构和功能的健康和疾病信息。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Neuroscientists are faced with a torrent of experimental data about the structure and function of the brain in health and disease. Much of this information pertains to the cerebral cortex and cerebellar cortex, the dominant structures of the human brain. These are challenging to study because they are highly convoluted sheet-like structures and are highly variable from one individual to the next. We propose a set of major enhancements to our existing set of neuroinformatics software tools for visualization, analysis, and data mining that facilitate studies of cerebral and cerebellar cortex. Key components of this resource include (i) surface- based atlases in humans and nonhuman primates that capture the shape of cortical convolutions and represent population averages as well as individual variability; (ii) a database of neuroimaging data (SumsDB) coupled to an online visualization tool (WebCaret); and (iii) a brain-mapping software application (Caret) that provides numerous analysis and visualization capabilities. Our atlasing efforts will concentrate on human cerebral cortex, which contains a complex but poorly understood mosaic of distinct areas (100-200 in total). We will generate a 'library' of cortical areas in SumsDB representing many different published maps of cortical areas, identified using a variety of methods and all registered to a common atlas framework. This library will serve as a valuable and easily accessible reference collection for neuroscientists studying functional localization. We will also generate libraries of published experimental data related to cortical function and structure in normal individuals and in a variety of disease conditions. These libraries will facilitate cross-study comparisons that reveal consistent functional characteristics of each cortical area and functional differences between nearby areas. We will compare the functional organization of human cerebral cortex to that in the chimpanzee and macaque monkey. This will provide insights as to which cortical areas have a common evolutionary origin in each species, which areas have expanded in size in the human lineage, and whether there are cortical areas present in humans that are altogether absent in other primate species. Finally, we will implement several major enhancements in Caret software. This will include methods for more efficient and sensitive characterization of normal structure and function and of cortical abnormalities in disease conditions. Successful execution of these aims will provide neuroscientists with a powerful and flexible set of tools for analyzing, visualizing, sharing, and accessing a broad range of experimental data, thereby accelerating efforts to better understand, diagnose, and treat many brain disorders. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This project will provide improved brain mapping methods for characterizing structural and functional abnormalities of the brain in a variety of neurological and psychiatric disorders. It will also provide a neuroimaging database and powerful data mining methods that facilitate access to enormous amounts of information about brain structure and function in health and disease.