In addition to the four Research Projects that collect data and interact in visualization and databasing,  there is an Administrative Core responsible for oversight, evaluation and dissemination of information. The Administrative Core oversees and coordinates the entire UC Davis/UC San Diego Human Brain Project, establishing and maintaining contacts with other investigators.

The specific aims of the Project are as follows:

1. Develop a Neuroscience Information System that contains a Neuroscience Information Repository (NIR) with tools for thesaurus and metadata creation and database manipulation to permit indexing, linking and retrieval of graphical and non-graphical datasets, using the primate lateral geniculate nucleus as a model.
2. Develop a NeuroImage Repository with visualization technology that can manipulate, simplify and graphically display 2-D and 3-D representations of high resolution cytoarchitectonic and single neuron images that form parts of large image datasets of monkey brain, of human thalamus or vertebrate retina.
3. Develop tools for manipulation and display of high resolution digital histological atlases of macaque and human brains, for overlaying and extracting image-oriented data derived from studies of gene expression in normal and pathological brains, and for constructing Neuroscience-specific thesauri (vocabularies) that use NIR to cross reference among graphical and non-graphical datasets, using the lateral geniculate nucleus as a model.
4. Develop tools for creating and extending databases of Neuroscience information based on image, physiological or connectional data, for building new comparative databases and thesauri of cell typology, morphometry or connections, and for making links between these and other databases.
5. Collaboration: Each of the individual projects falls under one or more of aims 1-4 and provides data input that contributes to and informs all of them. A designated collaboration between all projects, focusing on the primate lateral geniculate nucleus serves as a prototype around which the overall specific aims are addressed.

 

Contributions of Project 1 to the program as a whole

This project is the recipient of data that come in varied and application-specific formats from Projects 2-4; it synthesizes, coordinates, integrates these data and converts them into a smaller number of formats supported by the NIR; it is developing and supporting the data formats on which all secondary or derived data processing and interactive operations are performed on the program-specific data; it  is developing methods for exchanging the program-specific data with other databases of neuroscience information.

Taking advantage of new insights in informatics, this project will develop an information system that will integrate the project-specific datasets and build project- and program-specific metadata with the capacity to annotate in graphical and textual form and to import data in diverse formats from other neuroscience data repositories. It is building a prototype Neuroscience Information Repository based on data about the primate lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) and its connections.

Contributions of Project 2 to the program as a whole

The contributions of this project to the program as a whole are: it provides high resolution cytoarchitectonic brain images and the tools for manipulating them; it provides the images of the primate lateral geniculate nucleus to the database being developed in Project 1; it provides lexical data about lateral geniculate structure, chemistry and cell types to the database.

The contributions specific to this project are: it will develop the highest resolution brain atlases of monkey and human brains yet available; it will develop a browser for incorporating image-based data held in other formats into the atlas; taking advantage of new developments in visualization techniques, it will develop interactive visualization tools for generating derived image data and for manipulating the very large image files in remote and distributed settings using high speed computer networks.
 

Project 3: Neuronal Structure and Function

Contributions of Project 3 to the program as a whole

The contributions of this project to the program as a whole are: it provides high resolution images of retinal neurons and tools for manipulating them; it provides these images to the primate lateral geniculate database being produced by Project 1, along with details of the physiological properties and connectional relationships of the ganglion cells that form the principal subcortical afferent input to the lateral geniculate; it provides lexical data about these properties and connections for the database.

The contributions specific to this project are: it provides a database of the vertebrate retina that can stand alone if necessary; this database is accompanied by database-specific tools that can be used by other investigators for mining the visual components of the retinal database or for manipulating their own images, especially those derived from confocal microscopy.

Contributions of Project 4 to the program as a whole

The contributions of this project to the program as a whole are that it provides the connectional data about the efferent connections of the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) and related visual corticocortical connections to the database being prepared in Project 1, and it provides these in a format compatible with the atlas browser being prepared in Project 2, and with the information server being developed in Project 1.

The contribution specific to this project is the development of a unique interactive system for the recording and analysis of connectional data using a high-resolution digital brain atlas.