Neuroscholar 1.00, a neuroinformatics databasing website

Describing neuroanatomical circuitry at the systems level requires the use of databases to collate published descriptions of neuroanatomical data (Bur ns, D. Phil. Thesis, Physiology Department, Oxford University, 1997; Fellem an and Van Essen, Cerebral Cortex, 1, 1991, 1-47; Scanell et al., J. Neuros ci. 15, 1995, 1463-83; Young, Proc. R. Sec. London Ser B, 252, 1993, 13-8). These data are then analyzed with computational techniques. These methods do not address the problem that qualitative neuroanatomical descriptions ca n be interpreted in different ways, and rely on the collator's skill to pro duce the correct interpretation. I describe a knowledge-base management sys tem called "NeuroScholar", designed to store multiple interpretations of ne uroanatomical tract-tracing data in a neuroanatomically consistent framewor k. I illustrate how this system may be used in conjunction with data-mining analyses. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.