Today, researchers can simultaneously record the electrical or optical activity of a thousand neurons in a mouse’s brain while the animal is navigating a maze and very soon that number may be in the millions.
These recent rapid technical advances means that neuroscientists are generating data that is quantitatively and qualitatively different than before. However, the languages used to capture the data as well as the software tools used to access and analyze the data vary from laboratory to laboratory and sometimes even within a laboratory. This lack of uniformity makes it challenging to share and integrate experimental data.
To remedy the problem, the Allen Institute for Brain Science www.alleninstitute.org, California Institute of Technology www.caltech.org, New York University School of Medicine www.school.med.nyu.edu, Howard Hughes Medical Institute www.hhmi.org, and the University of California at Berkeley www.berkeley.edu are collaborating to make databases related to the brain more usable and accessible for neuroscientists.
With funding from GE, the Kavli Foundation www.kavlifoundation.org the Allen Institute for Brain Science, HHMI, and the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF) www.incf.org, the year-long project will focus on standardizing a subset of neuroscience data for scientists to share.
The initial one year program will focus on a subset of neuroscience data referred to as cell-based neurophysiology data. The partners will work with software developers and vendors to establish an open format that will be able to store electrical and optical recordings of neural activity and determine the conditions where the experiment was performed.
Today, digital information can be stored when photos are taken with mobile phones and then makes it possible for individuals to share that photo with other computers, but unfortunately, no such data standard exists in neuroscience.
However, developing such a standard or unified data format would enhance the ability of brain researchers worldwide to share and combine their research results. This would not only drive progress in neuroscience but also encourage the validation of existing results and create vital new collaborations with other fields.
The need for a common data format in neuroscience is made urgent by the rise of large-scale collaborative projects, such as the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative. Another important fact is that scientific publishers and granting agencies such as NIH are moving towards mandating data-sharing as a requirement for funding.