Researchers in Europe have created an open database of decades of macaque brain stimulation research to help scientists plan new studies and avoid unnecessary duplication of animal experiments.
Brain stimulation is used to change the activity of neurones and study how different parts of the brain influence behaviour and has laid the foundation for therapies such as deep brain stimulation (DBS) for Parkinson’s disease. Monkeys have been widely used for this research because their brains and behaviour share important similarities with humans.
Researchers from EARA member Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, together with colleagues from Sorbonne University, Vanderbilt University, Vrije University Amsterdam and Amsterdam University Medical Center, combined information from 734 brain stimulation studies in rhesus and cynomolgus monkeys published from the 1950s onwards. The team collected information about which brain regions were stimulated, the type of stimulation used, details such as stimulation frequency and strength, and information about the macaques used in each study.
They found that half of the studies focused on ten brain regions, while around 150 other regions were studied much less often, highlighting areas where further research could help fill gaps in our understanding of the brain. The researchers also found that stimulation frequency was more closely linked to behavioural effects than stimulation strength. By bringing this information together, the database allows researchers to easily identify what has already been studied, find gaps and make more informed decisions when planning new experiments.
“We hope the paper and its associated open datasets can serve as a practical resource for researchers planning new projects, both to build on what's already been done and to support Reduction (one of the 3Rs) by helping avoid unnecessary duplication,” said Sjoerd Murris from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and first author of the article published in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.