Neuroinformatics Assembly 2022 - Sessions
FAIR Workflows for neuroscience research
 Co-Chairs: Helena Cousijn, PhD (DataCite) and Prof. Lucia Melloni (MPIEA)
An exciting development we are witnessing in neuroscience research is the increase in large-scale collaboration. But on the other hand, the field faces significant reproducibility problems which introduces great uncertainty in the interpretation of study results. More specifically, consciousness research inherits this same challenge, while also facing further limitations of the contrastive method put forward almost a decade ago. Such complications have impeded the search for the neural correlate of consciousness, and thereby put to question the validity of the theories of consciousness that were built on those findings. To address the question of what anatomical structures and physiological processes in the human brain give rise to consciousness, would require countless studies, and critically, the aggregation of data across them. Yet, the lack of infrastructure to aggregate results in a consequential way, poses great challenges for researchers to fully understand the extent of a research study - including the experimental context, the methodology, analysis, stability of the results and data. Development of FAIR workflows will address that need, unleashing the possibility to better understand the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness. Topics:
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F1000 - Sharing and publishing your data
Chair: James Barker, Publishing Executive, F1000 Research Ltd. Presenters: Rebecca Grant, Head of Data and Software, F1000 Research Ltd. F1000 has upheld an Open Data policy on F1000Research and our Partner Platforms since 2014. Over this time, we have gained extensive experience in aiding authors in presenting and publishing the data support their publications. Through the workshop we will present how we go about supporting our authors in sharing their data through traditional and non-traditional article types, and how these practices can support discoverability and reuse of this data. Topics:
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Tools and formats for large scale network modelling
Chair: Padraig Gleeson
A number of groups around the world are developing complex, experimentally constrained network models of neuronal function. Creating the software infrastructure to develop, simulate and share these types of models takes a significant amount of time for any of the groups involved and there can be a lot of overlap, duplication in work and repeated effort. The purpose of this workshop is to highlight some of the initiatives currently underway to build biologically detailed neuronal network models as well as those projects building the infrastructure to make it easier to develop, disseminate and compare the models. This workshop is an activity of the INCF Working Group on Standardized Representations of Network Structures. Topics:
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How do I rigorously express where my manipulation occurred in the brain or nervous system?
Chair: Stephen Van Hooser, Brandeis University Presenters: UBERON team, Josh Siegle, Allen Institute, Yongsoo Kim, Penn State University This workshop focuses on the problem of unambiguously and rigorously declaring where a probe or other manipulator is placed in the brain, so that it can be understood by humans or machines. We will hear about solutions that have been developed in highly used model organisms like the mouse, and hear about cross-species ontologies that have been developed. The goal of the workshop is to spread best practices and to identify needed digital infrastructure so that it may be developed. Topics:
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Automatic spatial quantification of brain data from small animal models
Co-Chairs: Maja Puchades and Jan G. Bjaalie
This workshop will present and compare a series of neuroinformatics tools for performing feature extraction and advanced brain-wide distribution analysis in an atlas context. The speakers will be recruited from different projects and institutions developing complementary tools and services for brain-wide analysis of data originating from small animal experimental neuroscience. They will discuss alternative approaches for registration of images, segmentation, analyses, reuse of data, and smart combinations of new neuroinformatics tools originating from different laboratories and projects. Attendees will be guided through use cases demonstrating how the tools can be used in different context and for different purposes. Topics:
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Global brain consortium’s EEG normative initiative for creating standards for MEEG analysis
Co-Chairs: Pedro Valdes-Sosa and Jorge Bosch-Bayard
With the increase of large collaboration and data sharing, EEG data faces the critical barrier of replicability and data pooling problems. Especially for quantitative EEG (qEEG) analysis, the characterized age-frequency distribution of log-spectrum may lose reliability for clinical diagnosis when people gather datasets from different sites recorded at a different time with varying data acquisition protocols because of batch effects.This workshop will present the Global Brain Consortium’s multi-national EEG normative initiative for creating international standards for MEEG analysis. Topics:
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EEG: the interface between neuroinformatics and clinical/basic science research
INCF Secretariat
This discussion panel will cover the challenges the EEG and neuroimaging community face as an interface between neuroinformatics and clinical/basic science research. Panelist to include: i. service providers: EEGLab, MNE, and FieldTrip and ii. data providers: Pakistan, Healthy Brain Network (Mike M.), Arnaud Willringer, Temple University, EEGManyLabs. Topics:
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Fully transparent ERP & MRI study methodology descriptions with ARTEM-IS and eCOBIDAS
Co-chairs: Angela Šoškić, Suzy Styles and Remi Gau
Accurate reporting is critical for transparent, reproducible, replicable, FAIR-compliant research in the scientific record, and allows advanced forms of meta-science to be conducted. Two recent initiatives that address this challenge are ARTEM-IS and eCOBIDAS. Both are community collaborations that aim to design tools that facilitate detailed methodology documentation in neuroscience. These projects engage in broad consultation to maximise ease of use, clarity and specificity in the tools. Topics:
Users are expected to bring a study that they would like to document. Ideally, but not necessarily it would be their own study. |
Event and condition annotation of BIDS data using HED – from start to finish
Co-chairs: Scott Makeig and Kay Robbins
Hierarchical Event Descriptors (HED) fill a major gap in the neuroinformatics standards toolkit, namely the specification of the nature(s) of events and time-limited conditions recorded as having occurred during time series recordings (EEG, MEG, iEEG, fMRI, etc.). We, the HED Working Group, propose a half-day online INCF workshop on the need for, structure of, tools for, and use of HED annotation to prepare neuroimaging time series data for storing, sharing, and advanced analysis. Topics:
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Diversity and inclusion in Neuroinformatics
Co-Chairs: TBD
The lack of diversity and inclusion continues to remain an issue in STEM. Even though it is well acknowledged, and there are initiatives that promote diversity and inclusion, progress is slow. The INCF, as an umbrella organization in Neuroscience, is incredibly well placed to help accelerate our progress by bringing its members (both institutional and individual) together to discuss what concrete steps we, as a community, can take. Topics:
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Software arena (tool developers BoF)
Co-Chairs: Shailesh Appukuttan and Ankur Sinha
Contemporary neuroscience is heavily reliant on computing. From computational modelling to the analysis of data gathered from experiments, all tasks in the neuroscience research pipeline require a basic knowledge of common computing tools. Yet, the multi-disciplinary nature of neuroscience research implies that many of us do not hail from computing disciplines, and therefore have not received formal training in this area. Keeping in line with its goal of improving technical software/computing knowledge in the research community, the INCF/OCNS Software working group (WG) will conducting this session Topics:
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Neuroimaging Quality control - focus on informatics aspects of the niQC methods, tools, and standards
Co-Chairs: Pradeep Reddy Raamana and Yaroslav Halchenko
The Neuroimaging Quality Control (niQC) working group (WG) proposes a symposium focused on the informatics aspects of the niQC methods, tools, and standards. Informatics has been and remains a crucial part of assisting the neuroscience community to improve the quality of their data. Virtually all stages of the data acquisition and processing in neuroimaging involve some sort of quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC), that needs an informatics solution to deal with the complexity, heterogeneity, and scale of the neuroimaging datasets. While the community has already developed a number of tools, which are listed and categorized on the WG website (https://incf.github.io/niQC/tools), there are many unaddressed gaps in terms of interoperability and harmonization of the results across QA and processing ecosystems, where a number of decisions to be made based on the quality of the data at different stages of processing. Lack of standardization and cross-pollination of QA/QC “know-how” between ecosystems can lead to reduced reproducibility. We plan to invite various tool developers and methods researchers to discuss these gaps, and try to achieve or improve interoperability among different processing ecosystems. The focus would initially be on the anatomical (T1w) and functional MRI (EPI) data, at the stages of initial QA and QC on raw-data as well as QC on the derived measures. Topics:
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Fully transparent ERP & MRI study methodology descriptions with ARTEM-IS and eCOBIDAS
Co-chairs: Angela Šoškić, Suzy Styles and Remi Gau
Accurate reporting is critical for transparent, reproducible, replicable, FAIR-compliant research in the scientific record, and allows advanced forms of meta-science to be conducted. Two recent initiatives that address this challenge are ARTEM-IS and eCOBIDAS. Both are community collaborations that aim to design tools that facilitate detailed methodology documentation in neuroscience. These projects engage in broad consultation to maximise ease of use, clarity and specificity in the tools. Topics:
Users are expected to bring a study that they would like to document. Ideally, but not necessarily it would be their own study. |
BIDS Annotations, NIDM, and Query Across Datasets
Chair: David Keator Co-Chairs: Camille Maumet, JB Poline This workshop will focus on teaching researchers how to annotate BIDS datasets to make them more findable and reusable. We will identify some sample BIDS datasets and attendees will learn how to create un-ambiguous data dictionaries (JSON sidecar files) for BIDS formatted datasets using the latest tools from the NIDM and ReproNim efforts. Attendees will then learn how to query across the sample BIDS datasets using concept annotations created during the annotation portion of the training. Attendees will be taught how to use the query tools developed for NIDM by ReproNim while also being taught the core NIDM model and how to write their own queries. Attendees will then be introduced to NIDM tools allowing them to learn relationships between variables contained within the sample BIDS datasets using simple linear regression and how these derived data can be described using the BIDS-Prov extension. At the completion of this workshop attendees should be able to create their own BIDS annotation files using multiple tools, query within their BIDS dataset or across multiple BIDS datasets, and understand the current state of derived data provenance in BIDS and NIDM. |