Connectionists: Call for Papers

[Olaf Sporns]

Frontiers in Neuroinformatics
http://www.frontiersin.org/neuroinformatics/specialtopics/mapping_the_connectome__multi_/109

Special Topic
Mapping the connectome: Multi-level analysis of brain connectivity

Hosted By:

Claus C. Hilgetag
Olaf Sporns, Indiana University, USA
Trygve B. Leergaard, University of Oslo, Norway

Deadline for submission: 01 Mar 2011

The brain contains vast numbers of interconnected neurons that 
constitute functional networks. Structural descriptions of neuronal 
network elements and connections make up ‘the connectome’ of the brain, 
and are important for understanding normal brain function and 
disease-related dysfunction. A long-standing ambition of the 
neuroscience community is to achieve complete connectome maps for the 
human brain as well as primate and rodent brains. Currently, a wide 
repertoire of experimental tools is available for neural connectivity 
mapping at multiple levels of scale, from tracing of major pathways and 
trajectories, mapping of axonal distribution patterns, to the 
identification of the molecular properties of individual synapses. But, 
despite numerous connectivity studies through many decades, we are still 
far from achieving comprehensive descriptions of the connectome. There 
is increasing awareness that new neuroinformatics tools and strategies 
are needed to achieve the goal of compiling the brain’s connectome, and 
that any such effort will require systematic, large-scale approaches. 
Initial attempts involving systematic literature mining have yielded 
promising results, but more coordinated efforts are needed to collect, 
organize and disseminate connectome data sets. To this end, there is an 
urgent need to develop and identify neuroinformatics approaches that 
allow different levels of connectivity data to be described, integrated, 
compared, and shared within the broader neuroscience community. With 
this Special Topic, we aim to bring together different levels of 
connectivity analysis (from MRI-based methods, through axonal tracing 
techniques, to detailed EM-level synapse reconstructions), to elucidate 
neuroinformatics-related challenges at the level of data management, 
data comparison and analysis, and use of connectome data for 
neurocomputational models. We invite contributions related to all 
aspects of brain connectomics, with particular focus on state-of-the art 
tools for mapping connectivity, data sharing and comparison, and 
integration across different levels of mapping.

This Special Topic of Frontiers in Neuroinformatics is dedicated to the 
memory of Rolf Kötter, a pioneer in the field of brain connectomics.

Abstract Submission deadline: November 7, 2010 (1 page abstract).
Article Submission deadline: March 1, 2011 (full article submission).

-- 
Olaf Sporns, PhD
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Programs in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405
--
Sporns O. (2011) Networks of the Brain. MIT Press, Cambridge.
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