Gather your neurons and model together: Community times ahead

Abstract

Bottom-up, data-driven, large-scale models provide a mechanistic understanding of neuronal functions. A new study in PLOS Biology builds a biologically realistic model of the rodent CA1 region that aims to become an accessible tool for the whole hippocampal community.

Fig 1. Extended community synergies needed for region-specific, large-scale mechanistic models.

Ideal presentation of research community synergistic loop interactions with the aim of shared knowledge acquisition that can drive scientific discoveries. (A) Open-access experimental datasets of different types of information, ranging from molecular to morphological, electrophysiological, and anatomical data as well as data sets linking neural activity to cognitive functions are used for the development of a pool of model instances. (B) During model creation, modelers identify fragmented experimental data and, along with model predictions inform experimentalists. (C) Cumulative knowledge can be combined through the synergy within and beyond the computational community to produce a consensus model, e.g., a large-scale CA1 circuit model that can be used to address multiple hypotheses rigorously. (D) As an example, targeted manipulations of the model parameters provide a mechanistic understanding of the emergence of CA1 theta oscillations. (E) The FAIR principles are a cornerstone of these efforts. (F) The consensus model can inform and design experiments, implementing the 3Rs in animal research. Results from the experiments feedback and refine the models further increasing their predictive power. (G) User-friendly, public accessibility of the model will allow researchers to reuse, question, and extend it, potentially generating different variations of the model to address specific questions. These variations become part of the pool of the model instances to be integrated into an updated consensus model. Waves icon by Yosua Bungaran, synapse icon by dDara, seahorse icon by ProSymbols, licensed under CC BY 4.0 from thenounproject.com. All other icons are adapted with No Copyright from www.svgrepo.com.