BrainInfo

Abstract

Brainlnfo is a website that provides neuroinformatic tools and a brain knowledge base useful to students and teachers of neuroanatomy, neuroscientists, and clinicians concerned with brain disorders. For students of neuroanatomy it provides the web-equivalent of an illustrated dictionary of neuroanatomical terminology for human and nonhuman primates that is accessible by common structure names in several languages. For teachers and textbook authors it incorporates the NeuroNames Brain Hierarchy¹ of structures grouped by proximity in the style of Nomina Anatomica, named in English and extended to include all primary structures of the brain; in addition it provides 25-year PubMed citation counts for all English and Latin terms. For neuroscientists it provides access to stereotaxic brain atlases of several primate species, provides data overlays to a template atlas of the macaque brain showing the cortical areas as defined by a number of authors, indicates topologically homologous structures in the human, macaque and rat brain and provides a standard system of abbreviations for labeling brain structures in figures and web displays. It enables clinicians to compose a query to PubMed on disorders of a particular structure that incorporates all synonyms for the structure into a single query. The website is designed to lead users to the information they need by the shortest possible intuitive navigational route.

The authors make NeuroNames available for incorporation into computerized databases of information about the brain. NeuroNames is distributed in the form of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets of Microsoft Access database tables on request. All rights are reserved; incorporation of NeuroNames in whole or in part requires written permission of the University of Washington. Formore information contact dmbowden@u.washington.edu.