Mining the mind research network: a novel framework for exploring large scale, heterogeneous translational neuroscience research data sources.

A neuroinformatics (NI) system is critical to brain imaging research in order to shorten the time between study conception and results. Such a NI system is required to scale well when large numbers of subjects are studied. Further, when multiple sites participate in research projects organizational...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Henry Jeremy Bockholt, Mark Scully, William Courtney, Srinivas Rachakonda, Adam Scott, Arvind Caprihan, Jill Fries, Ravi Kalyanam, Judith Segall, Raul De La Garza, Susan Lane, Vince D Calhoun
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2010-04-01
Series:Frontiers in Neuroinformatics
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Online Access:http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/neuro.11.036.2009/full
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Summary:A neuroinformatics (NI) system is critical to brain imaging research in order to shorten the time between study conception and results. Such a NI system is required to scale well when large numbers of subjects are studied. Further, when multiple sites participate in research projects organizational issues become increasingly difficult. Optimized NI applications mitigate these problems. Additionally, NI software enables coordination across multiple studies, leveraging advantages potentially leading to exponential research discoveries. The web-based, Mind Research Network (MRN), database system has been designed and improved through our experience with 200 research studies and 250 researchers from 7 different institutions. The MRN tools permit the collection, management, reporting and efficient use of large scale, heterogeneous data sources, e.g., multiple institutions, multiple principal investigators, multiple research programs and studies, and multimodal acquisitions. We have collected and analyzed data sets on thousands of research participants and have set up a framework to automatically analyze the data, thereby making efficient, practical data mining of this vast resource possible. This paper presents a comprehensive framework for capturing and analyzing heterogeneous neuroscience research data sources that has been fully optimized for end-users to perform novel data mining.
ISSN:1662-5196