Through our previous Open Science articles,
we have focused on various fields about the significance of adopting an
Open Source Approach in Science and Technology. Let’s now dive deeper
into the spectrum by looking into some important aspects of
Neuroscience.
In this article on Open Science, we are going to start with
Neuroscience with an Open Source perspective of course, and look into
its Medical Implications in terms of medicine and beyond. We talk about
modern neuroscience in particular and look into some of its branches as
well, where Open Source proves to be a great advantage. Along the way
through this reading, we’ll also explore some FOSS developments in
Neuroscience.
Let’s start with this remarkable video that highlights distinct cases
of brain diagnosis. Dr. Daniel Amen clearly explains how each brain
needs to be diagnosed differently, every method of which can be so
unique.
What is Neuroscience?
Anatomy
of two representative neurons in the brain and a synapse between them.
Path of electrical current indicated with yellow arrows. Inset, close-up
view of the synapse. Illustration adapted from Alzheimer’s Disease
Education and Referral Center, National Institutes on Aging, U.S.
National Institutes of Health | Caption Source | Image Source
The basic idea of Neuroscience
is the study of the nervous system through current and evolving
scientific methods. It is all about a vast and expansive network of neurons and synapses not just limited to the brain but beyond.
Why is Neuroscience so important?
The key to understanding several neurological and psychiatric disorders such as Schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s and many other challenging diseases depend on the latest advancements in Clinical Neuroscience.
Neuroengineering
Adopting an engineering approach to better understand, repair and
improve neural systems is known as Neuroengineering. In modern
neuroscience, neuroengineering can be of great significance due to its
limitless perspectives to connect with cognition and understand the grey matter. A tool very commonly referred to in this domain is a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI).
The following video brings to you the story behind OpenBCI, an Open Source powered interface that received more than a double of its target funding objective on Kickstarter.
Open Ephys
is another Open Source Initiative for Neuroscience hardware. The main
motivation behind Open Ephys was to build awareness on how Open Source:
Eliminates redundancy
Reduces costs
Increases productivity
Read about a related paper here. Their story highlights all the foundational ideas behind Open Ephys.
Prosthetics and Enhancements
No more just enabling the disabled, talk about super-human abilities!
Basically, a prosthetic is a replacement for any part of the body.
But an enhancement can be something with a function that does not exist
in its natural form!
For many years now, neuroengineers around the world have been developing neural prosthetics built with designs based on different hardware frameworks. Some of these neuro-prosthetics are now so advanced that they hardly have a noticeable difference in terms of usability.
Amazing neural designs have now made it possible to help people do
things they thought they couldn’t anymore. But that doesn’t end there.
These prosthetics have now enabled people to perform unbelievable
superhuman tasks with ease. Kinda hints you to DC’s Cyborg eh? How far are we from fiction?
Well, the real world knows Neil Harbisson, as the first cyborg
on the planet. If you are curious, check out the following TEDx video
to know what the journey of becoming a cyborg can be all about:
Interestingly, a curious developer on GitHub tried the same experiment as described in Neil’s TEDx video with Python to demonstrate the same results.
All of this cybernetic
hardware that we talked about are mostly community-powered by Open
Source software, making it easier to address any issues the user might
come across. It is always easier to repair or calibrate a Medical
enhancement if the software that runs on it is Open Source.
Neuroinformatics
Just like Bioinformatics, as we discussed in our previous science article, we can define Neuroinformatics by revisiting the same definition:
Neuroinformatics is an interdisciplinary subject unifying Computer
Science and Neuroscience which involves developing computational methods
and software tools to analyze and interpret neurological data.
Computational Neurology and Neuroinformatics have the same
differences that Computational Biology and Bioinformatics have between
each other as we discussed earlier.
You might be wondering about using the phrases “Computational
Neurology” and “Computational Neuroscience”. There is a very basic
difference between the two terms. Neurology is a branch of Neuroscience
to study Neurological systems with a Medical perspective, to address
diseases related to the nervous system, whereas Neuroscience can be
anything about the nervous system in general. Read more about them here.
Open Source Neuroscience
The Open Letter to which over 200 people comprising of scientists,
innovators and researchers have made their commitment towards adopting
an Open Source Approach in all of their research endeavours in
Neuroscience can be found at opensourceforneuroscience.org. This gave birth to the Open Source Neuroscience Movement.
The respective paper titled “A Commitment to Open Source in Neuroscience” is open access and is available on the Cell journal named Neuron, which includes a very thoughtful statement:
There can be many interpretations of what “should” be shared, but
there needs to be a transition from the old attitude that there is no
obligation or motivation to release any code associated with a
publication, to a mindset that the code release can improve the
scientific worth of a publication as well as provide benefits for the
lab and the community in general.
This initiative will help a lot in strengthening honest research
practices on such a sensitive topic so closely related to understanding
and diagnosing psychiatric disorders. The reason behind the same is that
when someone submits a paper to any Neuroscience related journal, any
software source code that has been used for that research would have to
be made available along with it as well. Doing this establishes a
stronger validation of the research paper under review.
Open Neuroscience
is an information repository that follows a very similar ideology. It
stores project links on sites like GitHub that only center around
Neuroscience. The repository has been built with the help of a network
of collaborators with one common goal: to keep track of and curate
interesting Open Source projects related to Neuroscience.
Lets now look into the Implications of all that we discussed above in terms of Medical Neuroscience.
Open Source Brain Initiative
The Open Source Brain Initiative is based on simulating different regions of the human brain in order to understand it better.
When we talk about clinical neuroscience, a commitment towards
strictly following an Open Source Approach is very necessary to ensure
transparent research efforts and hassle-free diagnosis and treatment.
Neurotica
Neurotica is an open-source Neuroscience library for Mathematica
(a modern technical computing system covering most areas of technical
computing). The Neurotica library, in particular, has some very
interesting features, including one to handle 3D MRI data.
Neuropharma
As we already know, the term pharma relates to medicine in general,
neuropharma specifically refers to medicine made for neurological or
psychiatric disorders only.
Open Source Neuropharma
Open Molecular Neuroscience
follows an Open Source Pharma approach to ensure better collaborations
in improving existing drugs or developing new ones to combat
schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders which is the main idea
behind Open Source Neuropharma.
Open Source Neuroscience greatly impacts Open Source Neuropharma.
These approaches will lead to better transparent practices in the
development of neuro-drugs.
Using Open Source Software and Linux in Clinical Neuroscience will ensure a better understanding of any research goal targeted towards better neuropharmacology,
especially in collaborative initiatives among neuroscientists and
researchers. The foundation to these efforts has already been laid via
Open Source Pharma (discussed in our preceding open science article).
For example, Schizophrenia is a neurological disease that occurs due
to a neurodegenerative disorder giving rise to hallucinations and
delusions. These hallucinations and delusions can tend to be visible,
audible or sensory. Neuro-drugs continue to get developed to this day in
order to confront Schizophrenia by suppressing or alleviating these
symptoms.
The OPTICS Project is an initiative that was created with the sole purpose to provide an open platform for true translational science in Schizophrenia research. It is a great example of Open Science.
The OPTICS Project aims to demonstrate the value of an open-science
approach to better understand the efficacy and safety of medicines used
to treat schizophrenia and schizophrenia as a disease, including natural
history, subtypes, and etiologies.
The intent is to contribute to the development of novel research
designs and analytic methods for disparate data types that leverage
existing data sources.
It is now easier to diagnose neurological disorders because of the
neuroscience databases being Open Source through projects like OPTICS.
Bridging the gap between AI and Neuroscience
Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience associate very closely with
each other as the research based on any one of them is inspired by the
other. So a continuous effort is very essential in bringing them
together.
This extensive TEDx talk highlights many important points on both of
them. It also mentions the significance of Open Source Neuroscience
initiatives like the Human Brain Project and Numenta. Some other great initiatives are NeuralEnsemble and CON.
If you are a software developer and want to get involved and contribute to Neuroscience, here is an excellent resource to get started. You can also check this paper on the same.
Summary
So to recollect the discussion in brief, we introduced Neuroscience
to you with an Open Source perspective with some of its interesting
branches. We explored two important concepts, one being focused on
Neuroengineering to address Medical and Cybernetic enhancements and the
other being driven via the Open Source Pharma approach towards
Neuropharma, to design or develop better psychiatric drugs. Finally, we
also stressed on how AI and Neuroscience can be so correlated with each
other.
Though we can go on and on with this vast topic of Neuroscience, we
hope that we were able to cover the essentials and deliver the basic
idea behind Open Source Neuroscience with its Medical benefits.
This article was originally published on It's FOSS.
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