Towards a semantic framework for an integrative description of neuroscience patterns and studies: a case for emotion-related data.

ABSTRACT

The continuously increasing number of neuroscience studies and the difficulties associated with searching for related information and properly tracking neuroscience findings makes it imperative that one may be lead to isolated theories and findings which may be incompatible to each other or partially occluded. Semantically describing several aspects of studies in this field, such as, research groups attributes, aims of studies, experimental procedures followed, hardware and software tools utilised, acquisition systems used, as well as, the emerging neuro-physiological patterns found, may facilitate an integrative view of neuroscience theories. To this end, the current piece of work aims to provide a global theoretical framework using ontologies and semantic rules to describe neuroscience studies. Implementation details and applicability of the proof of concept are illustrated by means of an example targeting the semantic description of an emotion related study. The importance of the proposed framework in facilitating the envisaged personalised healthcare of the information society is discussed.