id_802. EXPANDING THE EBRAINS DIGITAL ATLASING ECOSYSTEM: INTEGRATING THE COMMON MARMOSET BRAIN TEMPLATE
Piotr Majka1, Shi Bai2, Adam Datta1, Karolina Łabuszewska1, Marcin Syc1, Tomasz Walkiewicz1, Marcello Rosa2
1 Laboratory of Neuroinformatics, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, 3 Pasteur St., Warsaw, Poland
2 Department of Physiology and Neuroscience Program, Biomedicine Discovery Institute, Monash University, Clayton, Australia
INTRODUCTION: EBRAINS is a leading platform for advancing neuroscience research, providing extensive support for rodent and human-oriented datasets. However, it currently supports only one non-human primate (NHP) species, despite the critical role NHPs play in bridging the transnational gap between rodent models and human studies. From a technical standpoint, the platform lacks a standardized procedure for incorporating atlases of additional animal species.
AIM(S): To address this limitation, we propose extending the EBRAINS platform by integrating an atlas of the common marmoset brain, termed Marmoset@EBRAINS. The atlas is accompanied with additional datasets, including neuronal distribution and cellular-level connectivity. Additionally, we demonstrate how EBRAINS users can map their own datasets onto the atlas using the platform's digital atlasing tools.
METHOD(S): The proposed atlas is derived from the Nencki-Monash marmoset brain template, a morphological average of 20 marmoset brains. The template combines high-resolution cytoarchitectural information with the isotropic resolution of MR-based templates. The atlas is implemented via Siibra-Explorer, the native EBRAINS atlas browser, while accompanying datasets were curated using the OpenScienceData workflow.
RESULTS: We implemented the Marmoset@EBRAINS atlas as a hosted resource on the platform. To facilitate this integration, we also extended the Siibra-Explorer plugin system to support features specific to our atlas. Further, we provided four curated, FAIR-compliant datasets that are fully integrated into the EBRAINS Knowledge Graph and registered with the openMINDS metadata framework.
CONCLUSIONS: This project lays the foundation for integrating the marmoset as a model species within EBRAINS. By providing a framework that enables other research groups to contribute data, it substantially broadens the platform’s potential user base. Finally, this work marks an important step toward generalizing EBRAINS’ atlasing tools and increasing the platform’s versatility.
FINANCIAL SUPPORT: EBRAINS 2.0 (101147319, Financial Support to Third Parties, FSTP)