Digital Platform by Allen Institute Revolutionizes Neuroscience Data Sharing

The Allen Institute in Seattle has launched the Brain Knowledge Platform – a digital platform that its creators describe as the most comprehensive AI-based tool for neuroscience data management to date. The project’s goal is to consolidate brain information from dozens of teams worldwide into a coherent, comparable knowledge system. Integrated into the platform are data across different species, including humans, other primates, and mice, with samples ranging from early development stages to old age. This unified mass includes data on cell types, age-related changes, disease markers, and other parameters. With AI algorithms, all this data is translated into a format that allows direct comparison of results from different laboratories and organisms, creating a large, cohesive database. “Understanding the brain requires more than the effort of a single institute. It requires bringing the community together,” said Shoaib Mufti, Director of Data and Technology at the Allen Institute.

One key motivation for the platform’s launch is the growing burden of neurological diseases. According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, the number of people living with conditions like stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, other dementias, meningitis, and several nervous system disorders has significantly increased over recent decades. In 2021, nervous system disorders affected approximately 3.4 billion people in some form – from brain injuries to migraines. Various populations of cells in the mouse brain are depicted below.

To create the Brain Knowledge Platform, the Allen Institute engaged organizations and projects willing to share data voluntarily. Among them are the Allen Institute for Brain Science, the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, teams from the University of Washington and Harvard, the Seattle Alzheimer’s Disease Brain Cell Atlas (SEA-AD) project, and other partners. A significant portion of the data comes from laboratory animals, but the platform also includes anonymized data obtained from 84 post-mortem human brain donors.

Amazon Web Services developed the system’s technical foundation, while Google created AI models applied to neurobiological data. According to Mufti, the Brain Knowledge Platform is envisioned as a “platform for discoveries”: it can be used not only for verifying pre-defined hypotheses but also for finding patterns in large datasets. One of the resource’s key advantages is the ability to directly compare data on different diseases. What previously required lengthy manual processing is now available in a single interface. Scientists can literally compare, for example, brain profiles in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases in a consistent format. The platform is provided to the scientific community free of charge. The project team hopes that new participants will join and upload their own datasets, with a mechanism being developed to accurately credit contributions, ensuring recognition and encouraging open exchange.