Q: What does the term 'neuroscientific ' mean?
A: In the given context, the term refers to:
This website, neuro scientific.
The emerging network of rapidly growing and interrelated bioinformatics resources that treat neuroscientific data, i.e. databases for time series, sequences, molecules, molecular structure, signalling pathways, taxonomies, anatomic data, functional data and behavioral data, as well as complex semantic information (ontologies, ideas, concepts, reasoning).
The network of ideas, persons and institutions that pertain to the multifaceted discipline of neuroscience; their relations and mutual influences inside and outside the discipline. The communication between the neuroscience community and the public.
Q: What are the immediate goals of the neuro scientific - project?
A: Some of the immediate goals:
Building a scalable and userfriendly platform for the discourse between people from all disciplines that are part of the multidisciplinary field of neuroscience, including not only biology and medicine but also informatics, philosophy, sociology and others.
Harnessing advancements in information technology to handle the growing amount of neuroscientific data, increase productiveness and ease communication between researchers.
Increasing awareness of the importance of these new technologies and the emerging disciplines of neuroinformatics and integrative neuroscience.
Reviewing the current international and especially European developments in neuroinformatics.
Development of data/metadata – models and databases to represent neuroscientific findings. Development of tools and platforms to make these databases understandable and usable.
Development of a news portal in which new advancements in the neurosciences are presented and discussed in an informed, yet understandable manner. Sparking interest for neuroscience in a broader segment of the public. Motivating the dialog between the public and researchers. Increasing public awareness of neuroscientific issues. Initiating an open dialog about the impacts, chances and dangers of future developments in neuroscience and neurotechnology.
Q: What are the long - term goals of the project?
A: Some of the long - term goals:
Acceleration of the progress in neuroscientific research.
Easing and enriching the worklife of neuroscientists.
The development of an open neuroscience community that is better understood by the public.
This website is still in an early phase of development, please pardon some of the empty pages. They will soon be filled. You might want to browse the catalog of neuroscientific courses in austria, leave a message in the forum or add an interesting neuroscientific event to the event database.
Neuro scientific is designed to be an open, interactive and participative environment. If you have any ideas for texts, publications and projects, you are welcome. Neuro scientific gives you the technology and the webspace to present your ideas to an international community. Read more in the user area.
The Semantic Synapse Project
Neuroscientific research is producing ever faster growing amounts of experimental data and models. Unfortunately, it is becoming apparent that current technologies for the storage and the communication of this complex information (e.g. relational databases, XML) are inadequate and are starting to hold back scientific progress. Information is often represented in forms that can hardly be processed by machines; different information sources are poorly connected and important information stays undiscovered.
The Semantic Synapse Project aims to break down theses barriers through the adaptation of new Semantic Web technologies. The term ‘Semantic Web’ designates a new generation of the World Wide Web (WWW), which makes it easy for software and users to process information and to make logical links. The project will be focused on the neuronal synapse, a field of outstanding biological and medical importance.
An extensive set of ontologies about synaptic function will be built based on the analysis of neuroscientific literature and databases. The ontologies will be developed in the Web Ontology Language (OWL), a new Semantic Web standard issued by the World Wide Web Consortium. The development of these ontologies will give neuroscientists the ability to publish and share their results and hypotheses in a machine-readable format anywhere on the internet.
As a platform for the developments of the project, a central and publicly accessible web portal will be built. This portal will have the function of a semantic search engine, which actively collects the information which researchers have saved decentrally anywhere on the internet. Due to the flexibility of the Semantic Web standards, this approach makes totally new forms of international cooperation and information sharing possible.
Besides providing solutions for technical problems, this project has the goal of building an active international community of interested parties in research and development. Furthermore, we are striving to establish this new interdisciplinary field of research in the intersection of biomedicine, neuroscience and computer science here in Vienna.
The project is led by Matthias Samwald as part of his PhD thesis and is supervised by Prof. Klaus-Peter Adlassnig (Section on Medical Expert and Knowledge-Based Systems, Medical University of Vienna).
