![]() | |
Content | |
---|---|
Description | Dynamic lexicon of neuroscience terms in a Semantic wiki |
Data types captured | Neuroscience |
Contact | |
Authors | Maryann Martone, Stephen Larson and others |
Access | |
Website | https://scicrunch.org/scicrunch/interlex/dashboard |
Miscellaneous | |
License | ![]() Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License |
NeuroLex is a lexicon of neuroscience concepts supported by the Neuroscience Information Framework project. [1] It is structured as a semantic wiki, using Semantic MediaWiki.
The NeuroLex is intended to help improve the way that neuroscientists communicate about their work by using common and consistent terminologies to enable easy data integration and interpretation across different studies and resources.
The Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF) enables discovery and access to public research data and tools worldwide through an open-source, networked environment. Funded by the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research [1], the NIF allows scientists and students to discover global neuroscience web resources that cut across traditional boundaries, from experimental, clinical, and translational neuroscience databases to knowledge bases, atlases, and genetic and genomic resources.
NIF provides deeper access to a more focused set of resources that are relevant to neuroscience, search strategies tailored to the field, and access to content that is traditionally "hidden" from web search engines. The Framework is an inventory of neuroscience databases, annotated and integrated with a unified system of biomedical terminology (i.e., NeuroLex). NIF supports concept-based queries across multiple scales of biological structure and multiple levels of biological function, making it easier to search for and understand the results.
As part of the NIF, a search interface to many different sources of neuroscience information and data is provided. To make this search more effective, the NIF is constructing ontologies to help organize neuroscience concepts into category hierarchies, e.g., stating that a neuron is a cell. This allows users to perform more effective searches and to organize and understand the information that is returned. But an important adjunct to this activity is to clearly define all of the terms that are used to describe data.
The initial entries in NeuroLex were built from the NIFSTD ontologies, which subsumed an earlier vocabulary, BIRNLex. It currently contains concepts that span gross anatomy, cells of the nervous system, subcellular structures, diseases, functions, and techniques. NIF is soliciting community input to add more content and correct what is there.