How are categories related to one another in NeuroLex?
NeuroLex was designed as a single tree hierarchy, that is, a given category has one and only one parent category (super category) and one or more children categories. A category is related to its parent and children through a “is a type of” relationship, also called an “is a” relationship. So, a Neuron “is a type of” Cell; a “Purkinje cell” is a type of” Neuron. In order to make sure that each Category is related to its parent only through an “is a” relationship, NeuroLex has created some contrived categories, e.g., Regional part of brain; Cytoarchitectural part of hippocampal formation”. We are preparing some additional documents to provide the rationale for this design, but for now, they provide useful buckets into which we can place information. The next phase will be more tricky, as we define other relationships between categories that are necessary to build a network of neuroscience concepts. The NeuroLex lets you define other relationships between Categories, e.g., “Is part of”;
