The mission of the Behavior and Neuroimaging Core (BNC) is to provide a coherent set of resources that will facilitate the implementation of each of the COBRE Project Leader’s research aims. The BNC provides ongoing support, training, assistance and advice to COBRE project leaders in the practical aspects of data collection, data management and data processing across a wide variety of neuroscience related methodologies. The BNC also serves as a resource to the broader neuroscience community at Brown and its affiliated hospitals and the broader Rhode Island academic community by providing formal and informal training, accessible data processing pipelines, and documentation of these and related resources.

The support provided by the BNC is distinct from but complementary to services provided by the Design and Analysis Core (DAC). Whereas the DAC is focused primarily on study design, analytical modeling, and techniques for inference, the focus of the BNC is on practical aspects of research conduct such as efficient and high-quality data acquisition, implementation and deployment of standard and newly developed tools for analysis of large neuroimaging datasets, and lowering barriers to the use of such tools through direct assistance, training and documentation.

Because the missions of the BNC and DAC are highly complementary, the effectiveness of each core is strengthened by collaborative relationships between them. The analytical techniques developed by the DAC in partnership with the Project Leaders are predicated upon robust high-quality data. Similarly, realization of study design principles requires practical expertise with the tools necessary to implement those principles. The BNC and DAC will share a full-time staff member with expertise in research design, statistical modeling, data management and high-performance computing.