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2 PORTAL SOLUTIONS IN
NEUROINFORMATICS
As INCF members we coordinate our efforts with
other INCF member countries. Their software
solutions for neuroinformatics research serve also as
an inspiration for our approaches. This section
provides basic information about activities of the
selected INCF member countries and their
neuroinformatics portal solutions.
CARMEN (CARMEN, 2011) is a virtual
laboratory for neurophysiology, which is developed
at eleven UK universities. It enables sharing and
collaborative exploitation of data, analysis code and
expertise. The complete lifecycle of
neurophysiology data is addressed. The primary data
types are neural activity recordings (signals and
image series).
The infrastructure for brain science information
and neuroinformatics within INCF Japan Node
(JNODE, 2011) includes developing and publishing
brain science databases under so-called platforms.
Each platform is being developed to organize
specific neuroinformatics databases (e.g. cerebellar
or brain machine interface platform). The research
results can be shared with the public.
German neuroinformatics node (GNODE, 2011)
focuses on the development and free distribution of
tools for handling and analysing neurophysiological
data. Especially software and hardware
infrastructure that eases the acquisition, storage and
analysis of experimental data in cellular and systems
neurophysiology is developed. Standardization of
data formats and analysis tools is encouraged.
Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF)
(NIF, 2011) developed within INCF national node of
the USA is a dynamic inventory of web-based
neuroscience resources: data, materials, and tools. It
advances neuroscience research by enabling
discovery and access to public research data and
tools worldwide through an open source, networked
environment. NIF offers e.g. a search portal looking
for neuroscience information, tools, data or
materials, access to content normally not indexed by
search engines, tools for resource providers to make
resources more discoverable (e.g. ontologies),
standards for data annotation, etc.
3 RESEARCH IN EEG/ERP
DOMAIN
EEG and ERP techniques are widely used in
research of brain processes. These techniques
include design and realization of EEG/ERP
experiments, recording and collection of EEG/ERP
data/metadata, long-term management and sharing
of these data, and data analysis and interpretation
(signal processing methods and statistical methods).
All these activities are currently partly covered
by commercial or open-source software tools and
hardware devices. However, especially commercial
recording tools are based on proprietary data formats
and include limited and closed-source software tools
for data processing. This situation seriously
complicates the access, storage, management,
analysis and public sharing of neuroscience data and
metadata and finally slows down brain research.
As the reaction to this situation and laboratory
needs, and in accordance with INCF efforts our
research group started to develop open source
software infrastructure and hardware devices for
electrophysiology research. The software
infrastructure is described in the following section.
4 INFASTRUCTURE IN EEG/ERP
RESEARCH
The software tools for EEG/ERP data and metadata
management, EEG/ERP signal analysis and
processing, and design of EEG/ERP experiments are
developed. The simplified component model of
EEG/ERP infrastructure is given in Figure 1. Details
and dependencies of components within EEG/ERP
portal were omitted to maintain the model
readability.
4.1 EEG/ERP Portal
EEG/ERP portal is the main building block of the
presented infrastructure. It serves as a system for
storage and management of EEG/ERP resources -
data, metadata, scenarios, tools and materials related
to EEG/ERP experiments. Thus EEG/ERP portal
advances electrophysiology research by enabling
access to public data, tools and results of research
groups. The main features provided by the system
include:
Management of EEG/ERP data/metadata
Management of EEG/ERP experimental
scenarios
Management of data related to testing subjects
Sharing of knowledge and working within
groups
Signal processing methods
Content management system
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SOFTWARE INFRASTRUCTURE FOR EEG/ERP RESEARCH
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