Science AMA Series: We are the neuroscientists who started the Open
Neuroimaging Lab, a winner of the Open Science Prize - AMA
Abstract
At its vibrant frontier, neuroscience is becoming the playground of a
worldwide interdisciplinary community which our team reflects well: we
come from 4 different continents and diverse backgrounds. Roberto, Katja
and Satra met at a BrainHack unconference, an event of art, science, and
sleepless nights. Later, Katja met Amy in a conference on arts and
neuroscience, and at MIT, a neurotechnology class linked Amy, Satra and
eventually Roberto. We share a passion for open science and
collaboration, a keen interest in neuroanatomy and visualization, and a
drive to engage humanity in understanding ourselves better in health and
in disease. Amy, through Eyewire, is allowing thousands of people to map
the brain through games and Roberto has been pleading all of us around
him to work on crowdsourced solutions for brain imaging. The Open
Science Prize competition offered the opportunity to mesh these
interests and to hopefully attract a worldwide community. The Open
Neuroimaging Laboratory (http://openneu.ro/start/) is a project to
facilitate finding, improving, and reusing the massive amount of brain
MRI data available online. This data represents an enormous funding
effort and the work and goodwill of thousands of participants. BrainBox,
our first application, transforms these static MRIs into “living”
matter for collaborative curation and analysis using only a Web browser;
and MetaSearch, our second app, allows it to easily query this huge,
living resource and find data relevant to you. Users can work, discuss,
edit and annotate MRI images simultaneously. No data are downloaded, no
software installed, allowing users to incrementally improve each other’s
work. This increases scientific efficiency, improves public data
quality, and reduces redundant effort. We already index more than 8000
MRIs, which are ready for collaborative projects. Twitter:
https://twitter.com/OpenNeuro Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/openneuro/ You can vote for Open Neuroimaging
Lab to win Phase II funding from the Open Science Prize (NIH, Wellcome
Trust) here: http://bit.ly/openneurolab We will be back at 1 pm ET to
answer your questions, ask us anything! Roberto Toro (Institute Pasteur,
France): I am interested on the development and evolution of the brain,
which I study through mathematical modelling, magnetic resonance imaging
and genetics. https://twitter.com/R3RT0 Katja Heuer (Max Planck
Institute, Germany): I am genuinely curious about brain development. I
am studying the development of the human brain and its connectivity
using magnetic resonance imaging. My aim is to relate brain development
and language performance. https://twitter.com/katjaQheuer Satrajit Ghosh
(MIT, joins at 2 pm ET): My research interests span computer science and
neuroimaging, specifically in the areas of applied machine learning,
software engineering, and applications of neuroimaging. The primary
focus of my research group is to develop knowledge discovery platforms
by integrating a set of multidisciplinary projects that span precision
medicine in mental health, imaging genetics, machine learning, and
dataflow systems for reproducible research. https://twitter.com/satra_
Amy Robinson Sterling (Princeton University): I am passionate about
understanding consciousness and human elements like creativity and
curiosity. I’m the Executive Director of Eyewire, a game to map the
brain played by a quarter million people worldwide. I hope that by
bringing together curious people from different backgrounds we will
bring new perspectives to old neuroscientific challenges.
https://twitter.com/amyleesterling