A collaborative knowledge base for cognitive phenomics

Abstract

The human genome project has stimulated development of impressive repositories of biological knowledge at the genomic level and new knowledge bases are rapidly being developed in a 'bottom-up' fashion. In contrast, higher-level phenomics knowledge bases are underdeveloped, particularly with respect to the complex neuropsychiatric syndrome, symptom, cognitive, and neural systems phenotypes widely acknowledged as critical to advance molecular psychiatry research. This gap limits informatics strategies that could improve both the mining and representation of relevant knowledge, and help prioritize phenotypes for new research. Most existing structured knowledge bases also engage a limited set of contributors, and thus fail to leverage recent developments in social collaborative knowledge-building. We developed a collaborative annotation database to enable representation and sharing of empirical information about phenotypes important to neuropsychiatric research (www.Phenowiki.org). As a proof of concept, we focused on findings relevant to 'cognitive control', a neurocognitive construct considered important to multiple neuropsychiatric syndromes. Currently this knowledge base tabulates empirical findings about heritabilities and measurement properties of specific cognitive task and rating scale indicators (n = 449 observations). It is hoped that this new open resource can serve as a starting point that enables broadly collaborative knowledge-building, and help investigators select and prioritize endophenotypes for translational research.

An Integrative Model of the Maturation of Cognitive Control

“…Cognitive control is underlain by the differential contribution of separable but interacting components, including, but not limited to, task-set switching and maintenance, adaptive gating, working memory, response selection, and response inhibition (Badre 2011, Lenartowicz et al 2010, Sabb et al 2008). Here, we propose a model of cognitive control that focuses on the flexible integration of processes supporting the online maintenance of goal-relevant information (working memory); the suppression of competing, goal-irrelevant information (inhibitory control); and the continuous evaluation of the effectiveness of selected actions (performance monitoring).…”

Multilevel models from biology to psychology: Mission impossible?

“…The framework was designed to enable automated meta-analysis once populated with sufficient knowledge including quantitative effect sizes (see examples of related work at www.phenowiki.org [Sabb et al, 2008;Sabb et al, 2009] and www.coggene.org [R.M. Bilder et al, 2011]).…”

A Systems Neuroscience Approach to the Pathophysiology of Pediatric Mood and Anxiety Disorders

“…It is typically probed using tasks that tap working memory, response inhibition, and set shifting (Sabb et al 2008). Although emotional dysfunction is a prominent feature of BD, impaired cognitive control is also a common correlate (for a review, see Passarotti and Pavuluri 2011).…”