Seminars on Neuroscience Imaging and Grid Computing

Prof Mark Ellisman, spoke to Monash medical scientists and computer scientists at Clayton on both 14 and 15 February giving a very good update on where imaging and optimal use of these images for analysis is heading. Abstract below:

A grand goal in neuroscience research is to understand how the interplay of structural, chemical and electrical signals in nervous tissue gives rise to behavior. We are rapidly approaching this horizon as neuroscientists make use of an increasingly powerful arsenal of instruments and tools for obtaining data, from the level of molecules to nervous systems, and engage in the arduous and challenging process of adapting and assembling neuroscience data at all scales of resolution and across disciplines into computerized databases. A consolidated strategy for integrating neuroscience data has been to provide a multi-scale structural or spatial scaffold on which existing and accruing elements of neuroscience knowledge can be located and relationships explored from any network-linked computer. Similarly, efforts to integrate multi-scale data from different methods using a common spatial framework are hampered by incomplete descriptions of the microanatomy of nervous systems. While some spatial and temporal scales are well studied and described, there are many domains where current methods have provided only sparse descriptions. Multi-scale imaging activities currently providing data to populate this brain information scaffold will be highlighted, with particular reference to those emerging with capabilities to facilitate mapping at a resolution of one nm to 10's of µm - a dimensional range that encompasses macromolecular complexes, organelles, and multi-component structures such as synapses and cellular interactions in the context of the complex organization of the brain. This effort also provides multi-scale structural frameworks for construction of models being used to test hypotheses not amenable to direct experimental analysis using software tools that allow for computational simulation of microphysiological properties of nervous systems.

• Prof. Mark H. Ellisman* is Director of National Centre for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR) which he founded in 1988 to achieve greater understanding of the structure and function of the nervous system by developing 3D light and electron microscopy methods. Dr. Ellisman, is also a founding fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, and has received numerous awards including the Jacob Javits Neuroscience Investigatory Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH http://www.nih.gov/) and the Creativity Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF http://www.nsf.gov/). Since 1996, he has been serving as the founding director of the UCSD Center for Research in Biological Systems (CRBS http://crbs.ucsd.edu). Dr. Ellisman is a professor of neurosciences and bioengineering (UCSD since 1977), an interdisciplinary coordinator for the National Partnership for Advanced Computing Infrastructure (NPACI) and leads NPACI’s Neuroscience thrust. He is also on the National Advisory Council of the NIH National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) and the Physics Division Review Committee of the Department of Energy, Los Alamos National Laboratory.