As the Human Brain Project grant emphasizes a collaboration between Computer Scientists and Neuroscientists, it was clear that both parties involved should benefit from the results of the research. This means that, not only must it offer neurobiologists a database to unify information in their field of research, but it must also provide an opportunity for computer scientists to explore innovative technology relating to informatics. In the first year of development we achieved the following goals:
1. We surveyed and analyzed the requirements for the database.
2. We designed a prototype user-interface for the database.
3. We built a data acquisition prototype to allow experimentalists to store data right away.
4. We outlined a data model that we believed would be capable of representing the kinds of data that will be stored in the database.
With a project this size it was important to begin by attacking its problems in multiple directions, simultaneously, but at a very high level. From the top-down we could design a user-interface that was capable of meeting all the requirements of the users. From the bottom-up we could build a prototype that would allow the users to reap the benefits of the research right away, by encouraging them to store their data in this system. And from the middle-out, we could take the requirements of the interface and the data, and compose an appropriate data model.
In the sections below we will briefly describe our progress in each of the phases.
We Built a Data Acquisition Prototype
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