NeuroLex is a
lexicon
A lexicon (plural: lexicons, rarely lexica) is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Greek word () ...
of
neuroscience
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions, and its disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, ...
concepts supported by the
Neuroscience Information Framework
The Neuroscience Information Framework is a repository of global neuroscience web resources, including experimental, clinical, and translational neuroscience databases, knowledge bases, atlases, and genetic/ genomic resources and provides many aut ...
project, which is funded by the
NIH
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...
Blueprint for Neuroscience Research. It is the lexical part of the NIF
knowledge base
In computer science, a knowledge base (KB) is a set of sentences, each sentence given in a knowledge representation language, with interfaces to tell new sentences and to ask questions about what is known, where either of these interfaces migh ...
, and NeuroLex is intended to make literature review easier and ensure consistent
terminology
Terminology is a group of specialized words and respective meanings in a particular field, and also the study of such terms and their use; the latter meaning is also known as terminology science. A ''term'' is a word, Compound (linguistics), com ...
and usage across researchers for the topics of experimental, clinical, and transnational neuroscience, and for genetic and genomic resources.
It is structured as a
semantic wiki
A semantic wiki is a wiki that has an underlying model of the knowledge described in its pages. Regular, or syntactic, wikis have structured text and untyped hyperlinks. Semantic wikis, on the other hand, provide the ability to capture or identif ...
, using
Semantic MediaWiki
Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) is an extension to MediaWiki that allows for annotating semantic data within wiki pages, thus turning a wiki that incorporates the extension into a semantic wiki. Data that has been encoded can be used in semantic searc ...
.
NIF provides access to 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.
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
A neuron (American English), neurone (British English), or nerve cell, is an membrane potential#Cell excitability, excitable cell (biology), cell that fires electric signals called action potentials across a neural network (biology), neural net ...
is a
cell
Cell most often refers to:
* Cell (biology), the functional basic unit of life
* Cellphone, a phone connected to a cellular network
* Clandestine cell, a penetration-resistant form of a secret or outlawed organization
* Electrochemical cell, a de ...
. This will allow 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.
Content
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
In biology, the nervous system is the complex system, highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its behavior, actions and sense, sensory information by transmitting action potential, signals to and from different parts of its body. Th ...
, subcellular structures,
diseases
A disease is a particular abnormal condition that adversely affects the structure or function of all or part of an organism and is not immediately due to any external injury. Diseases are often known to be medical conditions that are asso ...
, functions, and techniques. NIF relies on community input to add more content and correct the current information.
See also
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NeuroNames
''NeuroNames'' is an integrated nomenclature for structures in the brain and spinal cord of the four species most studied by neuroscientists: human, macaque, rat and mouse. It offers a standard, controlled vocabulary of common names for structure ...
*
Neuroscience Information Framework
The Neuroscience Information Framework is a repository of global neuroscience web resources, including experimental, clinical, and translational neuroscience databases, knowledge bases, atlases, and genetic/ genomic resources and provides many aut ...
Notes and references
Further reading
NIF was featured in a special issue of ''
Neuroinformatics
Neuroinformatics is the emergent field that combines informatics and neuroscience. Neuroinformatics is related with neuroscience data and information processing by artificial neural networks. There are three main directions where neuroinformatics ...
'', published in September 2008:
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External links
NeuroLex siteNeuroscience Information Framework (NIF) websiteNational Institutes of Health NIF websiteBioinformatics resources in NeuroLex
{{DEFAULTSORT:Neurolex
MediaWiki websites
Semantic wikis
Neuroscience software
Ontology (information science)
Anatomical terminology
Anatomy websites
Biological databases