Brainbase is a platform to accelerate and amplify EEG research that will launch in a couple months. Here is a sneak peek.
EEG research today usually consists of small datasets of 20-30 participants of one demographic (usually University students) and is very fragmented. Data comes in all shapes and forms, and controls are sometimes missing or different from study to study, making it difficult to aggregate data or replicate and validate results. Furthermore, even as lab PIs we often don’t have good track of our data. Graduate students and post docs leave and data is often lost.
Brainbase, an initiative by Sapien Labs, is a cloud based platform specifically for EEG that is meant to solve all those problems by providing various tools to expand, accelerate and amplify your research. The platform is currently in closed beta but we will open it out to a larger group in a few weeks ahead of our September launch.
Key Features
Our goal is to provide a platform that enables efficient research and collaboration and makes sure that data collected with effort on the part of both researchers and participants gets its biggest bang for the buck instead of fading out after a single paper. Here are various things you will be able do in V1.0 of the platform:
- Set-up experiments by defining subject profiles and uploading your own protocols or searching and using protocols uploaded by others. Experiments can be just for your lab or open for others to search and join allowing you to expand the diversity of subjects and pace of your experiment through collaborators around the world.
- Store and manage your subject and session data along with meta data forms so that all your archives are well structured and easily searchable so you never lose data again.
- Access standardized subject profile and session state of mind forms for stringent and standard controls.
- Search, configure and download datasets from the community database.
- Post individual results to your profile for quick feedback from the community.
There are of course, a lot more features in our pipeline, but these are the ones we are starting with.
Backend Data Processing
One of the key aspects of brainbase is the backend intelligence that checks and validates data completeness and quality and makes it searchable. This includes ensuring that there are no hanging files – for example, EEG recordings that are not associated with a subject, or incomplete metadata, missing EEG file headers and all of the other stuff you need to make sure your data is clean, complete and usable by anyone without the need for them to sit down with you for a lengthy conversation.
For now our EEG file parsing only supports EDF files but will soon add other file formats allowing interchangeability.
Open and Free
We are a non-profit foundation committed to an ethos of inclusive and open science. The platform will therefore always be open and free for all users who contribute their data to the community. Once the platform has checked the validity and completeness of the data and parsed it for searchability it will become available to all to search and download as part of their studies. Subject identifiers are encrypted and available only to the user who owns the data. To all others data is completely anonymized.
Premium Features
As a non-profit we have to sustain the platform so a subscription version will allow labs to configure closed groups and only share data to the community when they are ready. It will also provide access to some premium features.
Community Participation
The impact that brainbase can have on the scale and pace of EEG research depends on your participation. The more labs that set up experiments, submit protocols and contribute data, the more possibilities there are for everyone. Your feedback and suggestions will also be absolutely essential for brainbase to be an accelerating and amplifying enabler of your research.
Beta Testers
For folks who are willing to use the platform as beta testers over the next couple months to help us iron out all bugs and glitches and provide suggestions and platform content we will be happy to provide all of the premium subscription features for free for a two year period. To be a beta tester go to brainbase.io and enter your email in the box below the login box.
We need you! Sign up now at brainbase.io and give us your feedback!
