BrainMap Tools
In addition to Scribe, Sleuth, and GingerALE, BrainMap distributes or links to several other related tools that serve ancillary functions for carrying out coordinate-based neuroimaging meta-analyses and sharing coordinate-based data and metadata.
BrainMapWeb Application
BrainMapWeb is a web application for searching and retrieving data from the task database. Queries are similar to those of Sleuth, but lack 3D visualizations and advanced data manipulation capabilities. Please note that BrainMapWeb only searches the task database, not the VBM database.
Cognitive Paradigm Ontology
CogPO is an ontology of cognitive paradigms that is being built to enable the formal, machine-interpretable representation of paradigms in cognitive neuroscience experiments (Turner and Laird, 2011). CogPO is based on the BrainMap taxonomy for describing experiments, and utilizes both the BrainMap task database and the FBIRN HID for development and evaluation. CogPO version 1 is available as a wiki or can be downloaded in OWL format. CogPO also is available from within the NIF NeuroLex Wiki and the NCBO BioPortal.
icbm2tal Transform
icbm2tal is a coordinate-based transformation that was developed to accommodate spatial disparity between Talairach and MNI coordinates (Lancaster et al., 2007). icbm2tal has been shown to provide improved fit as compared to the earlier mni2tal transform (Brett et al., 2002), and improve the accuracy of coordinate-based meta-analyses (Laird et al., 2010). icbm2tal is distributed from within GingerALE or can be downloaded as MATLAB .m files.
Mango Image Viewer
Mango (Multi-Image Analysis GUI) is a viewer for biomedical research images developed by Jack Lancaster and Michael Martinez. It provides analysis tools and a user interface to navigate image volumes. Mango is available as desktop, web, or iPad applications. In the context of the BrainMap Project, Mango may be used for viewing meta-analysis results and generating and editing ROIs for Sleuth’s image-based ROI searches.
Talairach Daemon
The Talairach Daemon is a spatially comprehensive set of anatomical labels for Talairach coordinates. The Talairach Daemon is available as a desktop java client, web applet, or high-speed database server. The Talairach Daemon is utilized by BrainMap to apply anatomical labels to coordinates archived in the databases and to label the centers of mass of ALE meta-analysis results in GingerALE.
Anatomy Toolbox
The Anatomy Toolbox is a MATLAB-based software tool developed by Simon Eickhoff that allows the comparison of statistical images, including meta-analysis results, with probabilistic cytoarchitectonic maps of the human brain (Eickhoff et al., 2005; 2007). Consistent findings from neuroimaging may be related to the histological properties of the cerebral cortex. In turn, regions of interest defined by cytoarchitectonic areas (Eickhoff et al., 2006) may be used for probing the BrainMap databases.
BrainMap ICA Results
Networks resulting from an ICA decomposition of modeled activation images archived in BrainMap strongly correspond to resting state networks, as shown by Smith et al., 2009. Given the vast amount of metadata archived in BrainMap, the functional significance of these intrinsic connectivity networks has been quantitatively assessed by Laird et al. (2011). For more details, and the associated network images and metadata at a model order of 20, please click here.
