Open Science and Big Data in Brain Research Hit the Front Page

The recent article by James Gorman in the New York Times draws attention to an exciting new era of neuroscience and the increasingly bold efforts of scientists to unravel the mysteries of the brain with technological, methodological, and analytic advances. Clearly appreciating the enthusiasm of the field, Gorman also does an excellent job of tempering ambitions and expectations with sobering realities. The task at hand—mapping the human brain in high detail—is massive, and not one that any single scientist, laboratory, institution or discipline can take on single-handedly. The neuroscience of the 21st century is emerging as a “team science,” encompassing a broad array of disciplines (e.g., psychology, psychiatry, engineering, mathematics, statistics) and necessitating active, open collaboration.

In this regard, the Child Mind Institute, along with the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, have worked and will continue to work to foster global collaboration. Our sponsorship and support of open data-sharing efforts such as the 1000 Functional Connectomes Project and its International Neuroimaging Data-sharing Initiative (INDI), has encouraged the aggregation and open sharing of brain images from more than 5,000 individuals independently collected from 50+ sites around the world. Attracting engaged interest from scientists in more than 80 countries and 2000 cities, these efforts have provided the global scientific community with the data necessary to rapidly make leaps forward in our understanding of disorders such as ADHD, autism and schizophrenia, and how to better diagnose them using brain imaging.

Equally important, these two institutions have partnered in an effort funded by the National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH) to image the human connectome in clinical and non-clinical populations across the lifespan (ages 6-85), openly sharing the data with scientists around the world as it is collected. It is our hope that other institutions around the world will follow this example, and openly share the data as it is generated—not years after collection and publication.

Importantly, as highlighted by the recent NIH Brain Initiative, open data-sharing is not enough to unravel the mysteries of the brain or the debilitating effects of mental illness on healthy brain function. The field requires tools capable of bringing down the barriers to entry for studies of the human connectome, and supporting the processing of large-scale, ‘Big Data’ samples. In this regard, the Child Mind Institute, in collaboration with the Nathan Klein Institute, is actively working to develop and share analytic tools for the examination of the human connectome.

We are proud to be in the company of pioneers like those discussed in Gorman’s article. One of his subjects, Dr. Deanna Barch, sums up our shared ethos pretty well. She is quoted: “The amount of time and energy we’re spending collecting this data, there’s no possible way any one research group could ever use it to the extent that justifies the cost. But letting everybody use it—great!”

Michael P. Milham, MD, PhD, is director of the Center for the Developing Brain at the Child Mind Institute and a research psychiatrist at the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research.