Redwood Neuroscience
Title "Neuroinformatics,
applied scientific knowledge engineering and the laboratory as a knowledge
factory."
Gully
Burns
Biological
Sciences
Abstract:
The subject of neuroinformatics
is concerned with the 'information science infrastructure of neuroscience' and
typically involves the development of databases, knowledge management systems
and other technological approaches to address issues of complexity and
information management within of neuroscience. I present a computational
applied knowledge engineering system ('NeuroScholar'),
which builds on the existing infrastructure of neuroscience (namely the
published literature, laboratory notebooks and 'system sketching'). This system
is designed to introduce tools into the laboratory subtly, causing the minimum
of intrusion into the everyday process of performing science, and providing
scientists with attractive tools to manage their data, thus encouraging
widespread use of the system. NeuroScholar is free,
open-source software (http://www.neuroscholar.org).
Ultimately the purpose of this system is to bring a neuroscience laboratory's
data online; from scanned notebook pages, papers and review articles to
computational knowledge statements that assert a research finding of interest
(published under whatever security constraints decided on by the head of the
laboratory). We assert that the presence of a large number of such systems
online would transform the subject, permitting machine-readable access to
qualified knowledge supported by primary data. Within this talk, I present the NeuroScholar system and will demonstrate its use for neuroanatomical and neuroendocrine
knowledge.