What is neuroinformatics?

 A tremendous amount of remarkably diverse data about the brain is produced and published by the neuroscience community every year and this is growing at an exponential rate. Neuroinformatics provides new techniques for managing and analyzing the data to make data sharing and reuse more efficient.

Integrating research findings from different labs and multiple experimental techniques is critical to understand the complex details of neural structure and brain function. Neuroinformatics methods facilitate new insights through the integration and analysis of large, diverse and multi-faceted data sets.

Brain-related diseases, among them dementia and mental disorders, cause much suffering and place a huge toll on the health care systems of the world. To find better treatments, neuroinformaticians are developing the infrastructure and tools needed to integrate many levels of data and link symptoms to the underlying disease causes.

Establishment of links between studies on all levels of detail promotes new scientific insights, makes already existing data more valuable, and new studies more reliable.