“
“Human neuroimaging has entered the connectome-wide

association (CWA) era. As with genome-wide association studies (GWAS), the objective is clear: to attribute phenotypic variation among individuals to differences in the macro- and microarchitecture of the human connectome (Bilder et al., 2009, Cichon et al., 2009 and Van Dijk et al., 2010). Similar to the genome, the complexities of the connectome have compelled the community to expand its analytic repertoire beyond hypothesis-driven approaches and to embrace discovery science (e.g., exploratory data analysis). The discovery paradigm provides a vehicle for generating novel and unexpected hypotheses that can then be rigorously Y-27632 order tested. The acquisition and aggregation of large-scale, uniformly phenotyped data sets are essential to provide the necessary statistical power for effective discovery. In addition to the challenges of amassing such data sets, the neuroscience community must develop the necessary computational infrastructure and inference techniques (Akil et al., Buparlisib 2011). It is my tenet that adoption of an open neuroscience model can overcome many barriers to success. This

NeuroView will look at the neuroimaging community through the lens of discovery science, identifying practices that currently hinder progress, as well as open neuroscience initiatives that are rapidly advancing the field. I will focus on functional neuroimaging, because resting-state functional MRI (R-fMRI) approaches have proven to be highly amenable to discovery science. Adenylyl cyclase However, the majority of issues raised will apply to all scales (macro to micro) and modalities (e.g., diffusion imaging) used to characterize the human connectome. Van Horn and Gazzaniga first called for unrestricted public sharing of functional imaging data in 2002 (Van Horn and Gazzaniga, 2002). They created the fMRI Data Center (fMRIDC) and asserted that data sharing would lead to the generation of new hypotheses

and testing of novel methods. However, the dominant approach at the time was task-based imaging (T-fMRI), which has struggled with marked variability in approaches and findings across laboratories, even when studying the same cognitive construct. Such variability is problematic for data aggregation. The community failed to embrace their enthusiasm, limiting the practical success of the visionary fMRIDC effort. The 1000 Functional Connectomes Project (FCP) reinvigorated the ethos of data sharing and discovery science among imagers (Biswal et al., 2010). In large part, the success of the FCP can be attributed to its focus on R-fMRI. Despite initial concerns, R-fMRI has emerged as a powerful imaging modality due to high reproducibility of findings across laboratories and impressive test-retest reliability. In December 2009, the FCP (http://fcon_1000.projects.nitrc.