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Bowden DM, Song E, Kosheleva J, Dubach MF (2012) NeuroNames: an ontology for the BrainInfo portal to neuroscience on the web. Neuroinformatics. 10:1:97-114. doi: 10.1007/s12021-011-9128-8. PMID: 21789500; PMCID: PMC3247656.
ABSTRACT
Abstract BrainInfo (http://braininfo.org) 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, 2011) and the basis for the brain regions
component of NIFSTD (NeuroLex, 2011). 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.
Updated 20 Aug 2024.
* 3,500 neuroscientific concepts
** 1,000 visitors/day
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