Brain banking as a shared neuroimaging resource:MRI, microscopy , and web services

By preserving the brain of his aphasic patient Leborgne, the French neurologist Paul Broca inaugurated the most effective instrument of human neuroscience before Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI); that is: the post-mortem documentation of neurological damage in patients with discrete behavioral deficits. Following this illustrious tradition, but applying modern digital technology, The Brain Observatory is currently engaged in the development of a permanent digital archive for images and data produced from donated human brains. The archive is meant to represent the phenotypical spectrum of normal brain maturation, aging, and neurological disease. The resource is designed to support remote collaboration, future comparisons, as well as retrospective studies, as exemplified by the databases created for amnesic patients H.M. Individual anatomical atlases representing each donor include MRI and large-scale microscopic images. The atlases are linked to MRI-based morphometrics, quantitative neuropathology and scores derived from neuropsychological tests. Some donors also consent to the recording of biographical audio- and video-interviews, effectively personalizing their datasets. Our digital curation strategy is based on multiple, interrelated object identifiers (DOI) that describe diverse elements of the database and statistical analyses can be performed on line. Web technologies (such as Google Maps APIs) maximize the exploration and interoperability of the collection at multiple levels of expertise.