External Resources
Photography by Ian Farrell
AfriBCD strives to foster global collaboration, bringing together researchers and partners interested in neurocognitive development across the lifespan in Africa. As part of this mission, we are happy to share an assortment of free resources, ranging from open-source data, organizations aligned with our goals, developmental tools, and tutorials on data analysis techniques.
Open-Source Data
This community is dedicated to fostering collaboration, transparency, and knowledge sharing in scientific research. By embracing open science principles, we accelerate discoveries, drive innovation, and tackle global challenges together. Here we share resources, tools, and open access data sets.
Organizations
AfriBCD is not alone in its mission of connecting and amplifying the voices of those interested in a more global view of neurocognition across the lifespan. Here we share a list of organizations with similar goals. If you know of an organization that we have yet to showcase, please contact us.
Tools
Open Source Data
This community is dedicated to fostering collaboration, transparency, and knowledge sharing in scientific research. By embracing open science principles, we accelerate discoveries, drive innovation, and tackle global challenges together. Here we share resources, tools, and open access data sets
“EEGNet is an initiative that facilitates national and international collaborative EEG-based neuroscience research. At the core of EEGNet is the development of a scalable neuroinformatics hub for data sharing and analytics for the investigation of biomarkers of brain disorders.”
“EEGNet brings scientists and technical experts together in a centralized platform to combine standardized annotated EEG data and analytics for global health applications, by harmonizing data formats and computational tools used across the Canadian scientific community.”
Information about datasets shared across the EEGNet community has been gathered and linked in the Community Dataset Portal
EEGNet
OpenNeuro
“A free and open platform for validating and sharing BIDS-compliant MRI, PET, MEG, EEG, and iEEG data. 45,129 Participants, 1,113 Public Datasets”
“Browse and explore public datasets and analyses from a wide range of global contributors. Our collection of public datasets continues to grow as more and more become BIDS compatible. Download and use public data to create new datasets and run your own analyses.”
“Privately share your data so your colleagues can view and edit your work. Publish your dataset where anyone can view, download, and run analyses on it.”
“Create snapshots of your datasets to ensure past analyses remain reproducible as your datasets grow and change. Publish any of your snapshots while you continue work on your original data behind the scenes.”
The Open MEG Archive (OMEGA)
“The Open MEG Archive (OMEGA) is the fruit of a collaboration between the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre (BIC) of the Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital at McGill University, and the Université de Montréal, with the purpose of providing a core repository of MEG data for open science.”
“OMEGA is amongst the largest repository of MEG data presently available. It is a continuously expanding resource that also contains anatomical MRI volumes, demographic and questionnaire information. OMEGA may also feature multimodal electrophysiological data (e.g., EEG, field and cell recordings).
The primary objective of OMEGA is the conservation of brain imaging data collected with different brain imaging techniques and behavioral tests scores from healthy and patient volunteers (any age range), in order to allow future research in the field of high-powered detection of effects of interest in human brain activity.”
Organizations
AfriBCD is not alone in its mission of connecting and amplifying the voices of those interested in a more global view of neurocognition across the lifespan. Here we share a list of organizations with similar goals. If you know of an organization that we have yet to showcase, please contact us.
African Open Science Platform
“The African Open Science Platform will convene and coordinate the interests, ideas, people, institutions and resources needed to advocate and to advance open science in and for Africa.”
“The Africa Open Science Platform (AOSP) was established in 2017 with an aim to position African scientists at the cutting edge of data intensive science by stimulating interactivity and creating opportunity through the development of efficiencies of scale, building critical mass through shared capacities, and amplifying impact through a commonality of purpose and voice.”
Global Brain Consortium
“The Global Brain Consortium (GBC) is a diverse network of brain researchers, clinicians, and institutions committed to achieving improved and more equitable health outcomes worldwide. It is a Canada-based initiative that builds collaborative and dynamic relationships among globally-oriented health researchers, domestically as well as internationally.”
“Our mission is to address the challenges that need to be overcome to drive multinational collaborative efforts in support of Global Precision Brain Health by strengthening linkages between neuroscientists across borders and disciplines.”
“We are a partnership of researchers, charities, and industry and lived experience experts funded by the Wellcome Trust to landscape longitudinal datasets with potential for transformative mental health research.”
“We have searched the world for large longitudinal datasets that have the potential to support transformative research on mental health. Longitudinal datasets are a critical resource in helping researchers to advance knowledge about mental health. We aimed to understand the global landscape of longitudinal data that can accelerate mental health research. “
“We have identified over 3,000 longitudinal datasets that have been publicised online or in academic journals”
“To increase the discoverability of longitudinal datasets from across the globe we are developing a platform showcasing the datasets we have found since we began landscaping in 2023.”
Landscaping International Longitudinal Datasets
Tools
Introduction to mixed models in R and Rstudio
Resources are from a workshop given by Arturo Marroquín at CERVO, Université Laval, on March 22, 2024.
“Mixed models” is a term often used as a surrogate of any kind of analysis that takes into account correlation between measurements. However, in this document we will make reference specifically to the method that is an extension of simple and multiple regression. As this label might be confusing and even misleading, researchers should always confirm what type of the analysis is performed by softwares proclaiming to run “mixed models”.
Credits:
Arturo Marroquín
arturo.marroquin-rivera.1@ulaval.ca
Mazi Umntanakho
A Digital Tool for Social Emotional Development and Mental Health of Young Children
Mazi Umntanakho is a project born out of the Connecting the Ed-tech Research Ecosystem network (https://ceres.uci.edu), which has brought together a team of experts from the University of the Witwatersrand, the University of California in Irvine and Riverside, and Chapman University in California.
To see more visit our project page. This page features videos, infographics, pamphlets, and audio notes to assist in the social emotional development of young children. Topics include: self-awareness, emotions, social skills, difficult behaviour, and healthy habits and routines. These tools are available in English, Afrikaans, Xhosa and Zulu.
For more information view the pilot report or contact Catherine Draper.
Credits:
Videography by Thirty Four Collective
Graphic design by Tangerine Graphic Design