Knowledge Mechanics and the Neuroscholar Project: A New Approach to Neuroscientific Theory

Publisher Summary Neuroscience literature has intrinsic complications because its subject matter is both broad and deep. It involves many different scientific subdisciplines ranging from animal behavior and psychology, through cellular anatomy and physiology, to studies of molecular biophysics and biochemistry. This chapter describes how knowledge mechanics will examine the philosophical basis of the concept of theory in neuroscience and how a knowledge mechanical approach may address key issues. It discusses the high-level software requirements and the fundamental design concepts of the neuroscholar system, neuroscholar, and the significance of knowledge mechanics in detail. The process of building a representation of user knowledge in neuroscholar is accomplished by placing a computational structure on the data that adequately captures the concepts of neuroscience theory. The retrieval of knowledge from the system may rely on the structured, interconnected nature of the ontology to give the user the capability to query data and information or knowledge in a combinatorial way. The strength of neuroanatomical connections is often used to prioritize how different connections influence the global organization of the system.

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