13 - 18 OCTOBER 2013, ATLANTA, GEORGIA, USA

Visualization to Facilitate Structured Exploration of Published Findings in Rat Brain Connectivity

Contributors: 
Hua Guo, Steven R.Gomez, Mark J. Schnitzer, David H. Laidlaw
Description
We present the design, use cases, and user feedback for an online visual analysis tool for integrating brain-network findings. We report needs and challenges in studying brain connectivity as identified in close collaboration with domain experts and describe how they inform the design of a web-based tool for visualizing, annotating, and analyzing findings on rat-brain connectivity. By representing both the hierarchical and connectivity structure of the brain, the tool augments the original information space through basic inference and facilitates structured exploration of publications on brain connectivity. We finally report use cases and open challenges in this domain as derived from user feedback by neuroscientists. We found anecdotal support that neuroscientists using a multi-scale visual analysis tool can find useful connection information more quickly or discover more information than by using traditional searches like PubMed queries.