Final Report Summary - INCF (Neuroinformatics) Neuroinformatics integrates information across all levels and scales of neuroscience - from genes to behaviour - to help understand the brain and treat disease. It encompasses the tools and techniques for data acquisition, sharing, publishing, storage, analysis, visualisation, modelling and simulation. A tremendous amount of remarkably diverse data about the brain is produced and published by the neuroscience community every year and this is growing at an exponential rate. Neuroinformatics provides new techniques for managing and analysing the data to make data sharing and reuse more efficient. Integrating research findings from different labs and multiple experimental techniques is critical to understand the complex details of neural structure and brain function. Neuroinformatics methods facilitate new insights through the integration and analysis of large, diverse and multi-faceted data sets. Brain-related diseases, among them dementia and mental disorders, cause much suffering and place a huge toll on the health care systems of the world. To find better treatments, neuroinformaticians are developing the infrastructure and tools needed to integrate many levels of data and link symptoms to the underlying disease causes. The INCF is an international organisation devoted to advancing the field of neuroinformatics and the INCF community consists of 16 member countries and associated research groups, consortia, funding agencies and publishers in the field. INCF develops collaborative neuroinformatics infrastructure and promotes the sharing of data and computing resources to the international research community. Neuroinformatics integrates information across all levels and scales of neuroscience to help understand the brain and treat disease. INCF, which is an ongoing project, develops and maintains database and computational infrastructure for neuroscientists. Software tools and standards for the international neuroinformatics community are being developed through the INCF Programs, which address infrastructural issues of high importance to the neuroscience community. The INCF collects and makes available neuroinformatics tools in the INCF software centre, where anyone can upload documentation, executables and related files; track use of their software; create a wiki; and establish development teams. Two of the most popular INCF products are Waxholm Space and MUSIC, which are direct outcomes of the INCF program on digital atlasing and multi-scale modelling, respectively. Both software tools are available for download at the software centre. INCF organises an annual neuroinformatics congress, which is held in one of the member countries and provides an international venue for interactions across academic domains. Related documents Final Report - INCF (Neuroinformatics)
