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Original Research ARTICLE

BAMS neuroanatomical ontology: design and implementation

Department of Neurobiology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

We describe in this paper the structure and main features of a domain specific ontology for neuroscience, the BAMS Neuroanatomical Ontology. The ontology includes a complete set of concepts that describe the parts of the rat nervous system, a growing set of concepts that describe neuron populations identified in different brain regions, and relationships between concepts. The ontology is linked with a complex representation of structural and physiological variables used to classify neurons, which is encoded in BAMS. BAMS Neuroanatomical Ontology is accessible on the web and includes an interface that allows browsing terms, viewing criteria for classification, and accessing associated information.

Keywords:

ontology, structural neuroanatomy, neuron classification, BAMS, rat

Citation:

Bota M and Swanson LW (2008). BAMS neuroanatomical ontology: design and implementation. Front. Neuroinform. 2:2. doi: 10.3389/neuro.11.002.2008

Received:

07 January 2008;

Paper pending published:

24 March 2008;

Accepted:

09 May 2008;

Published online:

22 May 2008.

Edited by:

Robert W. Williams, University of Tennessee, USA

Reviewed by:

William Bug, The National Software Testing Laboratories (NSTL), USA
John Van Horn, University of California, USA

© 2008 Bota and Swanson. This is an open-access article subject to an exclusive license agreement between the authors and the Frontiers Research Foundation, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.

*Correspondence:

Mihail Bota, HEDCO Neuroscience Bldg., Room 414B, 3641 Watts Way, Los Angeles, CA, 90089, USA. e-mail: mbota@usc.edu