NeuroML is an open XML vocabulary for describing data driven neuron and nervous system simulations. I’ve used NeuroML and highly recommend its use for providing a standard way to exchange models of brain cells and brain systems.
A good place to start is the paper “NeuroML: A Language for Describing Data Driven Models of Neurons and Networks with a High Degree of Biological Detail” published in the June 2010 issue of PLOS Computational Biology.
The new word connectome was recently coined to indicate a complete description of the physical wiring of the brain.
The United States government, through the National Institutes of Health, has recently kicked off a five year Human Connectome Project that funds a number of laboratories and institutions with the ultimate goal of describing the physical wiring of the human brain.
There are many technical hurdles to get over before the end goal is reached but there are a number of exciting recent advances that should provide interesting and useful results in the near term while providing the foundation for achieving the ultimate goal at some point in the future.
Take a look at some of the images of brain tissue using BrainBow technology:
http://www.google.com/images?q=brainbow
Brain Research Using Online Data Repositories: Network Structure of the Brain
It’s clear to me that the way we will communicate and learn about biology will be very different from the textbooks and journal articles of today. It’ll be done through online simulations and visualizations of biological systems linked with their raw data sources.
A number of XML vocabularies have been or are being developed that are important tools towards achieving this goal. One is the Biological Pathway Exchange (BioPAX) vocabulary.
The team largely responsible for creating BioPAX over a number of years just published a paper “The BioPAX community standard for pathway data sharing” in the September 9, 2010 online issue of Nature Biotechnology.