Talk:Outline of brain mapping

Feel free to edit
This is a starter list. See preliminary thoughts below. Feel free to edit and improve. Structure is not set in concrete.

Initial concept
I'm struck by the huge mind mapping projects now well underway in the EU, and the mega one proposed in the USA. see Brain Activity Map Project. As those move forward its likely to generate a ton of research that Wikipedia will want to cover in some depth. Basically, what I started here was a "backgrounder" for people who are not intimately involved with brain research, or are involved with a very narrow portion, to get a "full view" of these massive mapping projects.

I imagine the U.S. brain map project like a big Phd thesis, only on a much more grand scale (i.e. hundreds of billion of dollars.) Prior to the original research work being designed and conducted a Phd candidate is expected to perform a nearly exhaustive “review of the literature” including all prior published research that touches on the proposed original research to be conducted. Part of that review is of course the large search for, reading, digesting and maintaining a full list of relevant references. I envisioned Wikipedia coverage of this massive research undertaking to be similar. It should cover all the background knowledge in reasonable depth to understand, and perhaps even inform, the direction of the original research to be performed.

Taking another analogy, imagine you are that rare congressman who has zero background in neurosciences, but would like to fully come up to speed on this particular project. Perhaps you are in an oversight role, determining budget levels and funding. Perhaps you promptly call up the Congressional Research Service unit inside Library of Congress and order yourself up a few hundred pages of well researched background, written in an easy to read style, accessible to the interested and motivated layman, but carrying substantial depth and ample references to enable drilling down into any specific area of further interest. Perhaps that staff researcher turns first to Wikpedia to "warm up"....

At the end of the day Wikipedi would never tolerate a multi hundred page single article with several thousand references. However, they will effortlessly allow several hundred individual articles on specific topics, and a main article that (eventually) branches out to all of them. The main article can target that highly motivated, individual Congressman, (or taxpayer...) and perhaps also include “one notch up” in depth and complexity, but it can't be huge. The detail articles on individual topics could likewise provide sold coverage at a generalist level, then probe to much greater specifics. This list might help organize and guide that broad overview article that covers the massive project as it rolls forward.

This is rough attempt to insure we start by “connecting closely with everything that we already know". New things are best learned by connecting to what you already know. I'm also stunned with the level of research (and funding) that brain mapping has already attained. I'm hoping this list will become "crowd sourced" and very much a Folksonomy. That way a broad array of people could look through it and find what they want. They could begin at whatever level they want and see things in context of "the whole". That is the initial vision... however I'm totally open to crowd sourced alternative, and superior directions. Rick (talk) 23:20, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I think it might perhaps make better sense to make this a category instead. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:27, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
 * If it stays as a list page, I'd suggest making sure that it is formatted (layout and such) according to Manual of Style/Lists. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:55, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the page name update, looks good. I rewrote the lead in paragraph to better match the WP style manual. Its a list but much more than a simple index of articles. Trying to get reasonably comprehensive coverage, in proportion to generally accepted agreement on the knowledge importance, a tidy "snapshot view" of the entire brain mapping project. WP style manual notes list articles work well in addition to categories, there are benefits to using both, and duplication is both expected and beneficial. I agree. In building this list I used everything: "see also" listings, categories, reference listings, and many, many runs of term searching (both in Google and inside Wikipedia). Rick (talk) 05:39, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank You Section
I've been studying memory/brain stuff for 3 months non-stop with Wikipedia as a launching point for further research. I finally arrived here and was shocked that I had already clicked on most of the links here. I was amazed to see it all in one place, which will help me to tie things together further. Thank you! <3 you - Kenneth Udut simplify3gmail.com 06/05/2013 Simplify3 (talk) 20:18, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Moved metacontent from article
The following description of what the outline includes is pretty standard for hierarchical outlines on Wikipedia, and generally goes without saying...

"Topics included are in rough proportion to their generally accepted overall importance to the human brain structure and function. This outline is not intended to be recursively exhaustive in every possible direction but to give an overview of what areas of knowledge may be impacted by the large new brain mapping research initiatives."

The Transhumanist 06:49, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Split the outline
Moved stuff specifically about the human brain to Outline of the human brain, per WP:SPLIT. The Transhumanist 09:25, 16 April 2015 (UTC)


 * split does not work well, fracturing the original structure roughly to Outline_of_the_human_brain OR Outline_of_brain_mapping. Original concept was to broadly cover all aspects of brain mapping (the multi-billion dollar research projects in US, EU, etc) and all areas that basic research might directly inform. Much thought when into the original outline (reproduced below). Its an organized whole, so the reader starts out at least seeing the vast and very rich forest. Re-titling also tends to obfuscate vs. clarifying. The resulting two parts don't add back up to the original.

6 Atypical function
 * 1) Broad Scope
 * 2) The Neuron doctrine
 * 3) Map, atlas, and database projects
 * 4) Imaging and recording systems
 * 5) General
 * 6) Specific systems
 * 7) Imaging and recording componentry
 * 8) Electrochemical
 * 9) Electrical
 * 10) Electromagnetic
 * 11) Radiological
 * 12) Visual processing and image enhancement
 * 13) Information technology
 * 14) Software packages
 * 15) Structure
 * 16) Visible anatomy
 * 17) Basic structure
 * 18) Isolating the brain from other structures
 * 19) Cranial nerves
 * 20) Significant components
 * 21) Microscopic level anatomy
 * 22) Receptor cells
 * 23) Development
 * 24) Normal development
 * 25) Genetics
 * 26) Evolution
 * 27) Typical function
 * 28) Sensory input
 * 29) Sight
 * 30) Sound
 * 31) Touch
 * 32) Smell
 * 33) Taste
 * 34) Other sensation
 * 35) Integration
 * 36) Affect
 * 37) Mind / Body
 * 38) Memory
 * 39) Memory bias and distortion
 * 40) Integration, computation & cognition
 * 41) Sleep, dreaming and imagination
 * 42) Wakefulness, awareness, attention
 * 43) Logic, computation, and information aspects
 * 44) Executive function
 * 45) Deception, lying and bias
 * 46) Motor output and behavior
 * 47) Gender differences and sexuality
 * 48) Higher level functioning
 * 1) Neurodegeneration and dementia
 * 2) Brain tumors and cancer
 * 3) Brain injury
 * 4) Seizures
 * 5) Stroke
 * 6) Recreational drugs, alcohol and addictions
 * 7) Mental health disorders
 * 8) Physical interventions
 * 9) Surgery
 * 10) Radiation
 * 11) Chemotherapy
 * 12) Electrical
 * 13) Physical exercise
 * 14) Other
 * 15) Case histories
 * 16) Scientists, academics and researchers
 * 17) Research Institutions
 * 18) Journals
 * 19) Not elsewhere classified
 * 20) Notes and references
 * 21) See also categories

Ordinal author Rick (talk) 23:18, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Quick explanation of Wikipedia outlines
"Outline" is short for "hierarchical outline". There are two types of outlines: sentence outlines (like those you made in school to plan a paper), and topic outlines (like the topical synopses that professors hand out at the beginning of a college course). Outlines on Wikipedia are primarily topic outlines that serve 2 main purposes: they provide taxonomical classification of subjects showing what topics belong to a subject and how they are related to each other (via their placement in the tree structure), and as subject-based tables of contents linked to topics in the encyclopedia. The hierarchy is maintained through the use of heading levels and indented bullets. See Outlines for a more in-depth explanation. The Transhumanist 00:03, 9 August 2015 (UTC)