NITRC News Group Forum: neuronames--an-ontology-for-the-braininfo-portal-to-neuroscience-on-the-web

NITRC News Group Forum: neuronames--an-ontology-for-the-braininfo-portal-to-neuroscience-on-the-web http://www.nitrc.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=2348 <div class="Abstract" lang="en"><a name="Abs1"></a>Abstract  <div class="normal">BrainInfo (<a href="http://braininfo.org">http://braininfo.org</a>) is a growing portal to neuroscientific information on the Web. It is indexed by NeuroNames, an ontology designed to compensate for ambiguities in neuroanatomical nomenclature. The 20-year old ontology continues to evolve toward the ideal of recognizing all names of neuroanatomical entities and accommodating all structural concepts about which neuroscientists communicate, including multiple concepts of entities for which neuroanatomists have yet to determine the best or ‘true’ conceptualization. To make the definitions of structural concepts unambiguous and terminologically consistent we created a ‘default vocabulary’ of unique structure names selected from existing terminology. We selected standard names by criteria designed to maximize practicality for use in verbal communication as well as computerized knowledge management. The ontology of NeuroNames accommodates synonyms and homonyms of the standard terms in many languages. It defines complex structures as models composed of primary structures, which are defined in unambiguous operational terms. NeuroNames currently relates more than 16,000 names in eight languages to some 2,500 neuroanatomical concepts. The ontology is maintained in a relational database with three core tables: Names, Concepts and Models. BrainInfo uses NeuroNames to index information by structure, to interpret users’ queries and to clarify terminology on remote web pages. NeuroNames is a resource vocabulary of the NLM’s Unified Medical Language System (UMLS, <cite>2011</cite>) and the basis for the brain regions component of NIFSTD (NeuroLex, <cite>2011</cite>). The current version has been downloaded to hundreds of laboratories for indexing data and linking to BrainInfo, which attracts some 400 visitors/day, downloading 2,000 pages/day. </div> </div><ul> <li>Content Type Journal Article</li><li>Category Original Article</li><li>Pages 1-18</li><li>DOI 10.1007/s12021-011-9128-8</li><li>Authors<ul> <li>Douglas M. Bowden, National Primate Research Center and Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington, Box 357330, Seattle, WA 98195-7330, USA</li><li>Evan Song, National Primate Research Center and Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington, Box 357330, Seattle, WA 98195-7330, USA</li><li>Julia Kosheleva, National Primate Research Center and Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington, Box 357330, Seattle, WA 98195-7330, USA</li><li>Mark F. Dubach, National Primate Research Center and Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington, Box 357330, Seattle, WA 98195-7330, USA</li> </ul></li> </ul><ul class="parents"> <ul class="details"> <li>Journal <a href="http://www.springerlink.com/content/120559/">Neuroinformatics</a></li><li>Online ISSN 1559-0089</li><li>Print ISSN 1539-2791</li> </ul> </ul> en-us Copyright 2000-2026 NITRC OSI Sun, 19 Apr 2026 19:09:36 GMT http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss NITRC RSS generator