Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Neuroscience/Archive 1

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Mostly Zen

Clinical neuroscience

The scope of this Wikiproject is obviously immense, given the ever-expanding field of neuroscience and its many facets. It is likely to range from molecular physics to artificial intelligence to sociology to clinical electroneurophysiology.

I've noticed the electroencephalography page is in need of a bit of work... JFW | T@lk 13:49, 25 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

New Template

I've created a new Neuroscience template to go into the talk pages of articles on which we're working: {{Neuroscience}} . Semiconscious (talk · home) 07:41, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

New Footer

Created this, too: {{WikiProject Neuroscience-footer}} Semiconscious (talk · home) 08:12, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions for improving brain

I saw that this article came up for review as a FAC. I still think it needs an overwhelming amount of work. Fortunately many of the subsections are very good so, although the task seems daunting, I am proposing the following "roadmap" towards improving the article:

Phase 1: Fact checking - there is a lot of unsourced information in the article. Much of it is very basic and should be covered by referring to a basic textbook. Other is quite esoteric. We can start doing this bit by bit and along the way.

Phase 2: Designing a better organizational scheme - the article is very disjointed and out of order. We need to decide on a better scheme (we can discuss these here) and do a major rearranging.

Phase 3: Removal of extraneous information: There is a lot of information here that does not belong in a basic article on the brain, a lot could be incorporated into other articles and especially that long list of regions could be sent to its own article.

Phase 4: Addition of helpful diagrams: We can find some on the net or we can draw our own like we did in the cerebellum article.

Phase 5: Proofreading: Making sure the prose is clear, technical terms are explained, logic is consistent, etc. We could recruit some editors that have provided lots of help with proofreading science articles such as Tony to help out.

OK, I know this is a lot of work, but now we know where to start. Any comments? Nrets 21:59, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've cleaned up and simplified the brain regions list, linking to the List_of_regions_in_the_human_brain article. That article needs quite a bit of work as well, unfortunately... Semiconscious (talk · home) 23:06, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Michel Foucault??

Why is Michel Foucault listed as a Neuroscience featured article?? I know he wrote a lot about power relationships in the context of medical clinics, but it really is a bit of a stretch, no? Nrets 01:17, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Another user added lots of stuff to this page originally. I missed this one: you're totally correct though, it's a huge stretch. Semiconscious (talk · home) 07:23, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, let's go!

Now that we're all here. Let's get going, let's improve the brain article. I'll start with reorganizing the article and checking facts. Nrets 02:37, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh good god I spent way too much time on that article. Yikes! Semiconscious (talk · home) 08:23, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Great job with brain. I took a little break from hacking away at it, but I'll give it another go. Are there any diagrams that you think might be useful (of brain regions or whatever)? I can whip up a few if you have any ideas. Nrets 18:15, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of thoughts: the material in the "Brain as food" might be better off as a separate page with a link, and a lot of the material in "Brain pathology" (and a couple other sections) seems to belong in Human brain instead of Brain. --Arcadian 18:27, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I had mixed feelings about leaving the brain as food thing there. On one hand it makes sense to move it, but on the other it adds a certain uniqueness to the article which you wouldn't find in other enyclopedia articles about the brain. Maybe we can add recipes? :) Nrets 19:12, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Arcadian: I had the same feeling, but for some reason I didn't want to get rid of it either. Maybe Nrets is right? I'm also a bit worried about the anthropocentric take on the article as well... but I think most people who search for "brain" would be most interested in the human brain. I don't know though. I'm too burnt out on this article to worry about it today. You guys make the call. :) Semiconscious · talk 21:12, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dysfunctional Neuroscience

I have been using wikipedia for a long time to look up biology, chemistry, and psychology related material and my overall impression is Wikipedia is an unparalleled tool when it comes to mass information. I am actively involved with the field of neuroscience and would like to help with this wikiproject as much as I can. The one thing I notice is there is no link to abnormal or dysfunctional neuroscience articles. These articles may or may not be accessible under various other topics (i.e. neurology), however I think it would be a good topic to add as a major link because of the universal interest people with or without esoteric neuroscientific knowledge have for odd or deviant behavior and the underlying mechanisms for those behaviors. What is the general consensus? Niubrad 02:30, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lateralization of brain function

It's late, and I'm tired, but would folks mind reading over the new lateralization of brain function article I've made? I couldn't find anything like it on Wikipedia, so I hope I didn't just waste my time and repeat myself. I'm sure there are some grammar errors and whatnot, but the facts should all be correct. Also, this is just "stuff I know" pretty well, and I don't have any good source for this stuff. I'm sure we could just put down some of Gazzaniga's books as a reference. I'll dig for some references later if no one else adds any. Cheers! Semiconscious (talk · home) 10:50, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's probably worth pointing out that the Sperry/Gazzaniga experiments were performed on brains with epilepsy, not healthy brains. I pointed that out in split-brain; it has implications in terms of how far you can extend the findings to the general population. -Ikkyu2 21:29, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Parallel processing

This one needs some help. Once we clean it up, we may want to send it over to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Computer_science, since neuro applications are a minor part of parallel processing. Semiconscious (talk · home) 08:32, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Collaboration of the month?

Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine has a cool Collaboration of the Week system that I think would benefit us greatly by codifying our tasks. What do you all think about instituting a similar, but monthly (for now), system? Semiconscious · talk 10:02, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a good idea. If nothing else, it helps define the range of articles we're motivated to improve. Any suggestions for initial nominees? --Arcadian 15:04, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think neuroscience is a great place to start. Semiconscious · talk 21:12, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yikes...

Unconditioned stimuli and Conditioned stimulus are in dire need of help... Semiconscious · talk 08:58, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'll work on them. Thanks for the notice. Sayeth 12:50, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe these should be merged into the article on Classical conditioning? Nrets 15:55, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- That may be the best course of action. I really don't have much to write on them beyond what is in the classical conditioning article already. Sayeth 16:38, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- I agree with this. Point them both to classical conditioning. Semiconscious · talk 17:22, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Navigation template

I created Template:Prosencephalon, but suggestions/modifications/corrections are welcome. As a first cut, I just took the bluelinks from List_of_regions_in_the_human_brain#Prosencephalon_.28forebrain.29 and alphabetized them, since that seemed like an uncontroversial way to start (there's a lot of different ways to organize this content.) I left out the Brodmann areas for now, but I wouldn't object to their inclusion. I'd also like to eventually see navigation templates for the rhombencephalon and mesencephalon as well. --Arcadian 01:44, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've now built stubs for Template:Rhombencephalon and Template:Mesencephalon as well. --Arcadian 03:59, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You need to change them a bit - first the font size as 80% is small. I got 19" LCD monitor that equals 21" CRT. I must say the quality of the LCD image is less than the CRT one (I don't know about the plasma screens). Netscape, Firefox and Explorer render it barely readable, while on Opera is practically unreadable. Keep the font size 100% (the default one), yes that would make the templates look bigger but so what. Second - 8 out of 12 links in Template:Rhombencephalon open the same page - "Cerebellum". What's the point of having - these links in the template or having these once separate pages merged? -- Boris 14:09, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good. I've changed the font size to 100%, and removed the redirects. (As long as I had it open, I also added the Brodmann areas.) --Arcadian 22:02, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New article

Take a look (and please edit!): Neuroscientist and List of neuroscientists. I created these this morning, and recognize some flaws and would like feedback. Semiconscious · talk 19:52, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good to me. Aren't the names suposed to be listed like this

Adrian, Edgar Douglas
Aebischer, Patrick
Allman, John
Alzheimer, Alois
...

when the last name is used for the alphabetical order? I'm just curious. -- Boris 13:43, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! As for the style, I just copied the style from a smattering of similar articles: List_of_chemists, List of astrophysicists, List of political scientists, etc. Semiconscious · talk 17:01, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like an odd mix of notable and not so notable neuroscientists. Was this based on articles already existing on WP? Nrets 18:42, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- I just culled everyone from Category:Neuroscientists. I agree it's a strange group, but it's what we have on here. The only neuroscientist I've ever personally added was James Papez. Semiconscious · talk 20:33, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Franz Nissl

While searching for some neuroscientists, I ran across the Franz Nissl page. It looks like there's a copyright vio over there. If anyone knows about this famous neuroanatomist, please rewrite a little page. Even a stub is better than a copyright vio. S e miconscious • talk 04:04, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Principles of Neural Science

Created this tonight if anyone would like to add, subtract, or beautify the work. S e miconscious • talk 10:03, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User box and stub image

This user contributes to the Neuroscience WikiProject.

Do you people have your own user box? If not here is one {{User_Neuroscience}}. -- Boris 19:35, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Paramedian pontine reticular formation

I was going to just put in a bunch of links and the PPRF redirect, and then post here hoping someone would actually create the page.

But then, you know how it is, you put in red links and a dead redirect and you worry someone's going to come along and dewikify: "Hey, that link is red! KILL IT! KILL IT!" So I thought, better just put a single sentence there and a stub. Then I realized I wasn't quite sure how to word the stub, so I reached over to the shelf and grabbed a textbook.

Forty minutes later: PPRF. I'd welcome input (especially a good public-domain picture, either a section through the relevant pontine level, or a functional wiring schematic.) I'm also, though, rather proud of the article. So I present it to you as an example of how I think it ought to be done.

Cheers- Ikkyu2 21:15, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Growth cone

Growth cone: I'm way out of my league here, but I ran across this red link while editing Santiago Ramón y Cajal and thought I'd at least add a stub. Do we have any axon guidance experts here? S e miconscious • talk 23:19, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Questionable articles?

These articles need categorization, merging, or deletion. I'm not sure which.

Here's what I think:

Neural technology - ~~delete, non-notable term, already covered in article neuroscience~~ Done! Sayeth
Neural hijack - ~~merge with Daniel Goleman~~ Done!
Neurodynamics - ~~wikify or merge into cybernetics~~ Done!
Mind-pixel - ~~redirect to Spin-Mediated Consciousness Theory - there is nothing here that is not in that article aready~~ Done!
Neuromorphic - add categories
Neuronal tuning - add cats., also link other articles to it

-Nrets 14:49, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

---

Neural technology appears to be an orphan page created by User:Stereotek, now known as User:Karl_Meier. "Neural technology" is an industry buzzword, and a company name, but not a good encyclopedia article. I agree that it is worthy of deletion. Neurogeek 17:23, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

---

Neural hijack is referenced in the article on Emotional intelligence. I added a Wiki reference to the EI article. NH article needs to be edited, but I am not familiar enough with the subject. Neurogeek 19:25, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nobel Prize Scientists

I just finished an informal reveiw of all the Nobel Prize laurates in Physiology or Medicine. Many of the articles are very short stubs and quite a few of these are also neuroscientists. I've made of list of my off-the-cuff assessments of each article on my subpage User:Sayeth/nobelprize. Some of the neuroscientists who need article improvements: Joseph Erlanger (electrophys), Herbert Spencer Gasser (electrophys), Walter Rudolf Hess (anatomy), Edward Calvin Kendall (neuroendocrinology), Tadeus Reichstein (neuroendocrinology), Roger Guillemin & Andrew V. Schally(GnRH and TRH), Paul Lauterbur & Peter Mansfield (MRI). Please help improve these articles to make Wikipedia more complete. Sayeth 20:34, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also Erwin Neher and Bert Sakmann (Patch clamp) are only stubs. Nrets 22:06, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What to do?

What should we do about this edit to Brain? It seems like it was done in good faith, but cites no references and makes little sense. Nrets 21:10, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've reverted it and left a nice note on the new User's talk page explaining that sources should be cited. I pointed him over to the newbie's welcome page and the Manuel of Style. Sayeth 21:30, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think you handled this just right (after your own self-edits anyway). ;) S e miconscious • talk 20:28, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Mind_and_Brain

For those of you that missed the addition on the neuroscience talk page, User:Lacatosias has started a new portal, Portal:Mind_and_Brain. Check it out! S e miconscious • talk 20:28, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is also a Portal:Psychology now, thanks to User:Zeligf. /skagedal^[talk] 01:24, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Open tasks list

Please help to keep the Biology portal's Open tasks list up to date. This is one of our main communication methods to help get newcomers more involved in editing articles. It contains a list of articles that need improving, articles that need creating, articles that need cleanup, etc. And of course, if you have the time, please help and work on some of the tasks on that list! --Cyde Weys 05:19, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the Neuroscience stubs, I wonder if there aren't some there that are perhaps better deleted or merged: Among these,

~~The Biological Neuron (delete)~~ - Listed for speedy deletion. Nrets 22:56, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

~~Neuroanatomist (merge neuroanatomy)~~ Done. Nrets 20:51, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

~~Inhibitory synapse (merge with IPSP)~~

Merged! S e miconscious • talk 19:29, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Afferent nerve (delete, afferent is merely an adjective describing a direction, may need definition but not an article)

~~Afferent neuron (delete, similarly)~~

I've merged this to afferent nerve and redirected the page there. S e miconscious • talk 19:29, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Efferent nerve (delete, similarly)

EEG

I've got a discussion over on the requested moves page regarding EEG. I'm curious to hear what folks here think. If you think I'm in the wrong, please let me know so I can stop pestering the poor folks over there. :) S e miconscious • talk 19:07, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Neural coding

I've created and populated the following category, Category:Neural coding. The only existing articles that I think that would belong to this category were action potential and population coding. Any other ideas? S e miconscious • talk 23:09, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Brain-computer interface and neuroprosthetic are two applications where neural decoding is very important. That's about my only thought on the topic. --Ben Houston 00:14, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Brain mapping

I've made the suggestion that the recently-created article brain mapping be merged into neuroimaging as a subsection. Read my main comment over on the talk page and let me know what you think. Cheers! S e miconscious • talk 21:57, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Brain mapping is much broader than neuroimaging. Already Brodmann was doing brain mapping with his cytoarchitectonic maps, or Woolsey, Penfield, Rasmusen, etc, with electrophysiology. Brain mapping is a scientific project, while neuroimaging is just a bunch of techniques... I think both articles should be kept separated, and the Brain mapping article should be expanded (as it is now, it's true that it looks like a subset of the neuroimaging article) Rto 08:42, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New Category:Evoked potentials

See: Category:Evoked potentials

There are many different types of evoked potentials that are not yet documented in wikipedia. This category should continue to grow if people are diligent in using it. Also, there should actually be three categories at some point, "evoked potentials", "event related potentials" and "evoked fields", but right now I am not sure there is enough material to justify that split. --Ben Houston 01:27, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Nice! Perhaps this will motive me to write some ERP articles! S e miconscious • talk 01:43, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

? subcategory of neurophysiology? Gleng 12: 43, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I removed it. It was applied to some of the evoked potential articles so I kept it around. --Ben Houston 12:44, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I just removed Neurophysiology cat (and the Neuroscience cat) from a bunch of the EEGs categorized articles. I have also created a Category:Magnetoencephalography category (but it only has two articles at present.) --Ben Houston 12:52, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The tree of categories is a bit messy. There is a category "Central Nervous System" but not listed as a Neuroscience category; as it is at present it could perhaps be merged into "Neuroanatomy"?Gleng 12:57, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Brain

I wonder if it wouldn't be beter to move the whole section in brain on "Study of the brain" into {{WikiProject Neuroscience]], and maybe reduce the gross anatomical detail with a separate article on "Anatomy of the brain"?. I think that brain food would be better as a separate article, I agree it's a nice quirky element. I think generally this article is still missing some tricks, and perhaps needs some fresh suggestions for interesting themes or angles to be introduced.Gleng 13:40, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps we should nominate it for peer review and see what others have to say about it. I think we should give this article a push and try to get featured status. --Oldak Quill 18:02, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly some of these sections could be made more concise, and have a link to the main article, but I think they should remain in some form. Nrets 02:35, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

MERMER needs looking at: as far as I can see there's nothing published since the first report in 2001.Gleng 17:37, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

List of people believed to have epilepsy

I've initiated a peer review on this article. It would be great to have some of your expert comments --Colin°^Talk 13:42, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A challenge

User:Messedrocker has, on the bounty board, offered a bounty of $20 per article for four articles which are brought to featured status from stub. These articles had to have been in Category:Medicine stubs or any of its subcategories (including Category:Neuroscience stubs) when the user first offered the reward.

Perhaps this WikiProject could use this challenge as an opportunity to collaborate on four neuroscience articles and attempt to bring them up to scratch in time. I would suggest we choose four important articles from the category, but four articles which are also diverse: a biography, a cell, a field of study, &c. As an example, Franz Nissl, oligodendrocyte and grey matter are all in this category. Does anyone else have any other suggestions? Please remember before starting to check whether the article had a Neuroscience stub tag before the user made the bounty. Let's attempt to come to a consensus as to which four to collaboratively improve. --Oldak Quill 18:09, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agree Franz Nissl. Agree Grey Matter. Suggest: Acquired Brain Injury, Anterior horn, Apraxia, Cognitive neuroscience, List of neurological research methods, Orbitofrontal cortex, Semantic dementia, Lower motor neuron, Upper motor neuron. --PaulWicks 19:27, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good suggestions, although a list, by definition, cannot become a featured article. Cognitive neuroscience would be rather fun and perhaps a disorder (the medics could help out on that): semantic dementia. --Oldak Quill 19:42, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think grey matter might be difficult, since it is not a functional term used to describe a brain region nor a specific kind of structure, rather a general anatomical term. So there's not much to say that is not already included in other articles such as cerebral cortex or hippocampus. I like oligodendrocyte and I would suggest adding dendrite or eyeblink conditioning. Both have lots of room to exand upon. Nrets 20:43, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm happy to provide some content on Semantic Dementia. My PhD Viva examination was by a dementia expert so I've got some papers lying around which could be helpful.--PaulWicks 09:22, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have jumped the gun and started on Orbitofrontal cortex. Would appreciate help with graphics!--PaulWicks 15:20, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Come on guys! Need some more input on the above articles! --PaulWicks 11:41, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Illustrations

I've added a couple of illustrations to Brodmann area. I made them by taking images from Gray's anatomy (#726 and #727 - directory is available at List of images in Gray's Anatomy: IX. Neurology), erasing the old captions, and adding labels in PowerPoint. I did my best to put the labels in the right places, but if anything seems off, let me know. --Arcadian 15:48, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Scientific Peer Review

I wonder what you guys think of my proposal: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Science#A_Scientific_Peer_Review. --Oldak Quill 16:42, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The SPR project is a good way to get scientists together and I like the project even bevor it started. Stone 12:53, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project

Hi, I'm a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-class, B-class, and Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Can you recommend any suitable articles? Please post your suggestions here. Cheers, Shanel 20:22, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The articles Action potential, Synapse and Cerebellum are all FA and are all quite good. I think neuron is quite good, I would put it as A-class, but not quite featured status. Brain has been considerably improved recently, but still needs some work, I would rate it as B-class. Nrets 22:30, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot for the feedback. Brain looks nice to me, I'm glad of an expert opinion to see the weak areas - hopefully it can be A soon, as it is a key topic we are likely to include in an early release. We will be tracking the neuroscience articles here, please add or edit your project's listings there (once I have time to put them in!). Thanks, Walkerma 05:26, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Image categorization

I've included some links on the front page; please feel free to add more of your own. One of the links I included was to Wikipedia's policy on image categorization. People seem fond of removing categories from images. While this is fine for many categories, I spent quite a bit of time adding neuroscience categories to images so we can keep track of what is "ours" for use in future articles. So, if you see people removing categories, please at least return neuroscience-related categories to the images. S e miconscious • talk 21:44, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Categorisation

I'm considering cleaning up Category:Neuroscience so as to give it a more intuitive structure, removing much of the clutter with which it is laden. This will involve moving many of the immediate subcategories (such as Category:Neuroanatomy) into more specific categories such as Category:Neuroscience disciplines or Category:Disciplines within neuroscience. Another example of this is the moving of Category:Neurotrophins into a category such as Category:Neurochemistry or even a subcategory of Neurochemistry such as Category:Neurochemicals.

This is all fairly simple but there is a particular thing I was wondering about. Category:Magnetoencephalography is currently in four categories: Medical tests | Neurology | Neuroscience | Neuroimaging. There seems to be a substantial overlap here. For example, why does it need to be in both Neuroimaging and Neuroimaging's father categories, neuroscience and medical tests. Optimally, Cat:Meg... would be in Cat:Neuroimaging. While Cat:Neuroimaging is in Cat:Neuroscience and Cat:Neurological tests. Cat:Neurological tests would be in Cat:Medical tests and Cat:Neurology (which itself is in Cat:Neuroscience. Is my model of general-to-specific appropriate for Neuroscience categorisation? Thanks, Oldak Quill 04:00, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It might be helpful to formulate some principles based around what exactly a categorisation is useful for. Personally I think that a category is useful as a quick guide to related articles, in which case a category should have perhaps at least 20 and usually not more than 60 items that are naturally linked, i.e. I would expect that there would be a fairly dense inter-citation between many of them. I find it disconcerting when closely linked articles are separated by long sub-trees of small categories.Gleng 17:28, 14 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Possible new category: Neuroinformatics

Neuroinformatics is the application of Informatics to Neuroscience. Frequently, this refers to developing intelligent databases for different aspects of neuroscience. These might be anatomical databases, databases of neural recordings (single neurons, or multiple electrode array recordings, in vivo or in vitro), or databases of neuroscience related data, such as EEG data, or axial tomography data. Many such databases exist: some can be found from the Society for Neuroscience database gateway, http://big.sfn.org/NDG/site/. Neuroinformatics proffers a way of bringing together the many different aspects of Neuroscience, allowing for easier interaction between neuroscientists: intelligent databases can provide a way to make data stored in different ways accessable to the whole community.

Messy Cerebellar Theories

If anyone is familiar with cerebellar models please head over to Cerebellum. There is a cerebellar theory section and modelling section that have been haphazardly added to by various editors and are now a hodgepodge of random statemnts. It would be a great help if anyone, who is more familiar with these topics, could sort these sections out. There has been some discussion about it also on the article's talk page. Cheers, Nrets 02:28, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dopaminergic nerve fibre (? may be better to leave things like this grow from article on dopamine rather than arise independently?)

Adrenergic nerve fibre (similarly)

??Gleng 18:21, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the terms afferent and efferent are important concepts, thus should be left alone (although afferent neuron could be merged into afferent nerve). Inhibitory synapse should definitely be merged. Nrets 18:27, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree as they are sometimes used to refer to specific modalities (sensory vs. motor) rather than simply relative neuronal connections. S e miconscious • talk 19:29, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - the other rogue is The Biological Neuron, sorry for mis-citing. OK I've thought about afferent nerve and I can see that this could be covered generically by an article that covered ways of identifying afferents (retrograde tracing and by electrophysiology); maybe I'll do this if I can find the time.Gleng 21:34, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New Category: Neurophysiology

I notiiced that a new category Category:Neurophysiology sprung up and sommeone has been recategorizing neuroscience articles as this. I agree that Category:Neuroscience as a category is too broad, however many articles that have been moved really also belong under Neuroscience. Would it be possible to move Neurophysiology as a sub-category of Neuroscience? I have no idea how to go about doing this. Sayeth, you are an admin, do you have any ideas? Nrets 14:37, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I'm not an admin, but making a subcategory is pretty easy and can be done by anyone. Just edit the "Category: Neurophysiology" page and at the bottom put [[Category: Neuroscience]]. Sayeth 15:21, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

CDN99 already took care of this with this edit. To subcategorize a category you simply add a category to the category page you wish to subcategorize. S e miconscious • talk 15:23, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New Category: Neurotechnology

I just created a new category, Category:Neurophysiology, and stuck a bunch of articles into it. Neurotechnology is produced by the intersection of Neuroscience, Neurology, Biomechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering (this group is also sometimes referred to as Neural Engineering.) I think the category is useful. It may be also be useful in the future to create a Neural Engineering category, but right now there doesn't seem to be enough articles to justify it.

Strangely, the Neurotechnology category isn't showing up as a sub-category in the Category:Neuroscience category page. I think a few other subcategories are not showing up there either. Something is funky. --Ben Houston 16:09, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ben: They're there, you just need to click on the "next 200" link. We've got a lot of neuroscience articles! Great job, by the way; welcome to our project. :) S e miconscious • talk 17:24, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm working on fixing this problem by cleaning out Category:Neuroscience. Right now, I'm removing Category:Neuroscience from articles that have been categorized using a subcategory of Category:Neuroscience-- feel free to help. Also, I don't think that images are usually categorized. --Uthbrian (talk) 18:30, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is useful. The categorisation is still too patchy at present to be very helpful. Would it be helpful to seek volunteers to take care of a particular category? I'd be happy to foster Neuroendocrinology for instance. I think Electrophysiology might be best merged with Neurophysiology.Gleng 13:24, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Despite what others may or may not choose to do, I find that categorizing the images helps keep track of them for potential use in future articles. Notice there is a special format that places the images in a gallery on the categories page; image categorization is a built-in function of the wiki mark-up used for Wikipedia. See m:Help:Image_page#Categorizing_images for more information. S e miconscious • talk 18:53, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You have a good point, Semiconscious-- it's hard to keep track of the images. I think there is a separate repository for neuroscience-related images at Wikimedia Commons ([2]), and these are freely categorized over there.

However, it looks like uploaders have to create an account at Wikimedia Commons. However, it looks like you don't have to register to categorize the images over there. I think the syntax for linking images from the Commons into Wikipedia is still the same. I should mention that I've never uploaded any images. --Uthbrian (talk) 19:44, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That is a good solution Uthbrian. The Neuroscience category has so many articles that it isn't as informative as it could be. --Ben Houston 18:38, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]