This non-research award provides four years of U.S. support for membership in the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF), a multilateral organization headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. INCF is a coordinated, international scientific effort to create a portal for navigation and integration of distributed resources within different domains of neurosciences. Thirteen nations so far (Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States) and the European Commission are members. The new services provided by INCF will contribute to improved access and integration of data and transfer of knowledge between levels of organization, and a more rapid development of realistic models of brain functions. INCF's Neuroinformation Community Portal will provide an interoperable network of neuroscience databases and related software tools. In addition, INCF will offer tested and validated work flows, with defined inputs and outputs, and tutorials and instructions for making use of such work flows for data analysis. The initial four years will concentrate on large-scale modeling of the nervous system, mouse and rat brain digital atlasing, integration of fMRI data resource, and neuroanotomical nomenclature and taxonomy.
Broader Impacts: Brain and nervous system studies for the long-term benefit of society require integration of heterogeneous and complex data collected at multiple levels of investigation. That capability is provided by INCF, a critical global network to advance knowledge and understanding of basic brain functions, devastating diseases of the nervous system, and neural processing as applied to information sciences and development of artificial systems. The INCF is a novel, internationally-funded infrastructure taking advantage of multiple levels of expertise in neuroinformatics - across boundaries, scientific domains, private and public sectors, methodologies and approaches.
" is an international initiative to facilitate neuroinformatics data sharing and to solve challenges in standardization and interoperability. The INCF was founded in 2005 and has currently 16 member countries (Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Switzerland, Sweden, Republic of Korea, UK and US). During the NSF granting period 2007-2011, the INCF has made a marked progress in its core mission to coordinate collaborative neuroinformatics infrastructure and promote the sharing of data and computing resources to the international research community. The INCF works through its four scientific programs, which represent long-term strategic undertakings to address issues of high importance to the neuroscience community: > Digital Brain Atlasing (DBA) – coordinates and improves the impact of brain atlasing projects. One main outcome is the "Waxholm Space", a coordinate-based reference space for the mapping and registration of neuroanatomical data in the mouse brain. > Multiscale Modeling (MSM) – improves interoperability and reproducibility of neural simulations. Main deliverables are NineML, a simulator independent description language for network models, and the Multi-Simulating Coordinator, MUSIC, a standard interface for run-time exchange of data among parallel applications in a cluster environment. > Ontologies for Neural Structures (PONS) – establishes consistent names for all neural structures. The program has together with the Neuroinformatics Framework, NIF, developed the joint project NeuroLex.org, a freely editable semantic wiki for community-based curation of the terms used in Neuroscience. > Standards for Datasharing (DASH) – facilitates the recording, sharing and reporting of metadata. The program is the youngest of the INCF programs, and is initially focused on developing a one-click share tool and a common API for sharing neuroimaging data. The INCF has also initiated a teaching and training committee, to develop best practices in neuroinformatics training and to facilitate international cooperation around courses and training materials. In order to realize the goals of the INCF, an international infrastructure for neuroscience data sharing and integration is being developed. This initiative will provide a platform for international neuroscience data publishing and access. The INCF member countries support this initiative and provide the driving use cases. The results and ongoing efforts of the INCF is communicated through the INCF web portal incf.org, where the different INCF reports are available, and through the annual INCF Neuroinformatics Congress (which was held in Boston, US, in 2011). INCF also has a website dedicated to neuroscience software tools, software.incf.org. References: > INCF Workshop reports also available from Nature Precedings: precedings.nature.com/collections/incf > INCF Annual Reports are available at incf.org: incf.org/about/publications/annual-reports > Documentation from INCF Neuroinformatics Congress: neuroinformatics2008.org neuroinformatics2009.org neuroinformatics2010.org neuroinformatics2011.org neuroinformatics2012.org > Digital Atlasing and Standardization in the Mouse Brain (2011). Hawrylycz M, Baldock RA, Burger A, Hashikawa T, Johnson GA, Martone M, Ng L, Lau C, Larsen SD, Nissanov J, Puelles L, Ruffins S, Verbeek F, Zaslavsky I, Boline J. PLoS Comput Biol 7(2): e1001065. dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1001065 > Waxholm space: an image-based reference for coordinating mouse brain research (2010). Johnson GA, Badea A, Brandenburg J, Cofer G, Fubara B, Liu S, Nissanov J. Neuroimage vol. 53(2):365-72. dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.06.067 > Run-Time Interoperability between Neuronal Network Simulators Based on the MUSIC Framework (2010). Djurfeldt M, Hjorth J, Eppler JM, Dudani N, Helias M, Potjans TC, Bhalla US, Diesmann M, Hellgren Kotaleski J, Ekeberg Ö. Neuroinformatics 8:43-60 dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12021-010-9064-z > Report on Digital Atlasing Standards in the Rodent Brain (Waxholm Space) (2009). Hawrylycz M, Boline J, Burger A, Hashikawa T, Johnson GA, Martone M, Ng L, Nissanov J, Puelles L, Ruffins S, Verbeek F, Zaslavsky I. dx.doi.org/doi:10.1038/npre.2009.4000.1 > Global neuroinformatics: the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (2007). Bjaalie JG, Grillner S. J Neurosci 27(14):3613-5 dx.doi.org/10.1523/?JNEUROSCI.0558-07.2007
