Skip to main content

Advertisement

Log in

Domain-Specific Data Sharing in Neuroscience: What Do We Have to Learn from Each Other?

  • Public Policy Forum
  • Published:
Neuroinformatics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Molecular biology and genomics have made notable strides in the sharing of primary data and resources. In other domains of neuroscience research, however, there has been resistance to adopting formalized strategies for data exchange, archiving, and availability. In this article, we discuss how neuroscience domains might follow the lead of molecular biology on what has been successful and what has failed in active data sharing. This considers not only the technical challenges but also the sociological concerns in making it possible. Though, not a pain-free process, with increased data availability, scientists from multiple fields can enjoy greater opportunity for novel discoveries about the brain in health and disease.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Ascoli, G. A., De Schutter, E., et al. (2003). An information science infrastructure for neuroscience. Neuroinformatics, 1(1), 1–2.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ashburner, M., Ball, C. A., et al. (2000). Gene ontology: Tool for the unification of biology. The Gene Ontology Consortium. Nature Genetics, 25(1), 25–29.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Ball, C. A. (2006). Are we stuck in the standards? Nature Biotechnology, 24(11), 1374–1376.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Basser, P. J., & Jones, D. K. (2002). Diffusion-tensor MRI: Theory, experimental design and data analysis—A technical review. NMR in Biomedicine, 15(7–8), 456–467.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Berman, H. M., Battistuz, T., et al. (2002). The protein data bank. Acta Crystallographica. Section D, Biological Crystallography, 58(Pt 6 No 1), 899–907.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bloom, F. (2006). Prying open the black box. Science, 314(5796), 17.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Boguski, M. S., & Jones, A. R. (2004). Neurogenomics: At the intersection of neurobiology and genome sciences. Nature Neuroscience, 7(5), 429–433.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Brazma, A., Hingamp, P., et al. (2001). Minimum information about a microarray experiment (MIAME)-toward standards for microarray data. Nature Genetics, 29(4), 365–371.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Buckner, R. L., Snyder, A. Z., et al. (2000). Functional brain imaging of young, nondemented, and demented older adults. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12(Suppl 2), 24–34.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Butte, A. (2002). The use and analysis of microarray data. Nat Rev Drug Discov, 1(12), 951–960.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Chokshi, D. A., Parker, M., et al. (2006). Data sharing and intellectual property in a genomic epidemiology network: Policies for large-scale research collaboration. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 84(5), 382–387.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • D’Esposito, M. (2000). Functional neuroimaging of cognition. Seminars in Neurology, 20(4), 487–498.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • De Schutter, E., Ascoli, G. A., et al. (2006). On the future of the human brain project. Neuroinformatics, 4(2), 129–130.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gazzaniga, M. S., Van Horn, J. D., et al. (2006). Continuing progress in neuroinformatics. Science, 311(5758), 176.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Greicius, M. D., Krasnow, B., et al. (2003). Functional connectivity in the resting brain: A network analysis of the default mode hypothesis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 100(1), 253–258.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Harris, M., Clark, J., et al. (2004). Nucleic Acids Research, 32(Database Issue), D258–261.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hodaie, M., Cordella, R., et al. (2006). Bursting activity of neurons in the human anterior thalamic nucleus. Brain Research, 1115(1), 1–8.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Hood, L. (2003). Systems biology: Integrating technology, biology, and computation. Mechanism of Ageing and Development, 124(1), 9–16.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keator, D. B., Gadde, S., et al. (2006). A general XML schema and SPM toolbox for storage of neuro-imaging results and anatomical labels. Neuroinformatics, 4(2), 199–212.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kennedy, D. N. (2003). Share and share alike. Neuroinformatics, 1(3), 211–213.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Konradi, C. (2005). Gene expression microarray studies in polygenic psychiatric disorders: Applications and data analysis. Brain Research. Brain Research Reviews, 50(1), 142–155.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Koslow, S. H. (2000). Should the neuroscience community make a paradigm shift to sharing primary data? Nature Neuroscience, 3(4), 863–865.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Laurens, K. R., Kiehl, K. A., et al. (2005). Attention orienting dysfunction during salient novel stimulus processing in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research, 75(2–3), 159–171.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lukic, A. S., Wernick, M. N., et al. (2002). An evaluation of methods for detecting brain activations from functional neuroimages. Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, 25(1), 69–88.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Marcus, D. S., Olsen, T. R., et al. (2007). The extensible neuroimaging archive toolkit: An informatics platform for managing, exploring, and sharing neuroimaging data. Neuroinformatics, 5(1), 11–34.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Marshall, E. (2002). Data sharing. DNA sequencer protests being scooped with his own data. Science, 295(5558), 1206–1207.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Miles, M. F. (2001). Microarrays: Lost in a storm of data? Nat Rev Neurosci, 2(6), 441–443.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Mitka, M. (2007). Scientists warn NIH funding squeeze hampering biomedical research. JAMA, 297(17), 1867–1868.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Noor, M. A., Zimmerman, K. J., et al. (2006). Data sharing: how much doesn’t get submitted to GenBank? PLoS Biol, 4(7), e228.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Oldham, M. C., & Geschwind, D. H. (2006). Deconstructing language by comparative gene expression: From neurobiology to microarray. Genes Brain Behav, 5(Suppl 1), 54–63.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Parkinson, H., Kapushesky, M., et al. (2007). Nucleic Acids Research, 35(Database Issue), D760–765.

    Google Scholar 

  • Raichle, M. E. (2003). Functional brain imaging and human brain function. Journal of Neuroscience, 23(10), 3959–3962.

    PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Roberts, L. (2002). Genome research. A tussle over the rules for DNA data sharing. Science, 298(5597), 1312–1313.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Seringhaus, M., & Gerstein, M. (2008). Manually structured digital abstracts: A scaffold for automatic text mining. FEBS Lett, 582(8), 1170.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Shields, R. (2006). MIAME we have a problem. Trends in Genetics, 22, 65–66.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Soldatova, L. N., & King, R. D. (2005). Are the current ontologies in biology good ontologies? Nature Biotechnology, 23(9), 1095–1098.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Spellman, P., Miller, M., et al. (2002). Design and implementation of microarray gene expression markup language (MAGE-ML). Genome Biology, 3(9), 46.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thomas, P. D., Mi, H., et al. (2007). Ontology annotation: mapping genomic regions to biological function. Current Opinion in Chemical Biology, 11(1), 4–11.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Van Horn, J. D., Grafton, S. T., et al. (2004). Sharing neuroimaging studies of human cognition. Nature Neuroscience, 7(5), 473–481.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Walton, M. M., Bechara, B., et al. (2008). The role of the primate superior colliculus in the control of head movements. J Neurophysiol (in press).

  • Whetzel, P., Parkinson, H. E., et al. (2006). The MGED ontology: A resource for semantics-based description of microarray experiments. Bioinformatics, 22(7), 866–873.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Professor Floyd Bloom of the Scripps Research Institute and Dr. Balaji Srinivasan of the Statistics Department at Stanford University for useful discussion and comments on this article.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to John Darrell Van Horn.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Van Horn, J.D., Ball, C.A. Domain-Specific Data Sharing in Neuroscience: What Do We Have to Learn from Each Other?. Neuroinform 6, 117–121 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12021-008-9019-9

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12021-008-9019-9

Keywords

Navigation