New Capabilities in Neuroscience Research Workflows

To relate neural activity to perception and behavior, leading neuroscience teams are implementing new approaches to vastly increase the scale, speed, and validity of research activities and their computational aspects. They are adopting a new set of technologies—Automated Research Workflows—to ease access to computing infrastructure, automate data acquisition and analysis, and collaborate across broad teams. DataJoint implements standardized, automated data analysis pipelines for the major types of neuroscience experiments: neurophysiology, histology, and behavior—as open source-software—and operates them on its cloud platform. These techniques allow new team structures to evolve around scientific projects, also creating opportunities for artificial intelligence applications in the discovery loop. In this seminar, we review how large-scale projects operate their data pipelines, and how these solutions can be integrated in diverse research labs.