A growing body of research has documented the utility of magnetic resonance imaging technologies to support in vivo examination of brain organization and function in the nonhuman primate. Recent efforts have not only demonstrated the ability to recapitulate the findings of postmortem examinations, but also to provide novel insights into the organizational principles of nonhuman primate connectome and the functional interactions within it. These gains could only be made through in vivo studies. These advances are timely given the growing prominence of translational and comparative neuroscience studies in large-scale national and international initiatives focused on advancing our understanding of human brain function and ability to generate novel therapeutics for neurology and psychiatry.

Despite demonstrable feasibility and utility, the field of nonhuman primate imaging is only its infancy. Numerous challenges related to the acquisition and processing are still in the process of being worked out, and the bounds of what can be accomplished are only beginning to be explored. In this regard, the overarching goal of PRIMatE Data Exchange (PRIME-DE) is to create an open science resource for the neuroimaging community that will facilitate the mapping of the non-human primate connectome. To accomplish this, we will aggregate a combination of functional, diffusion and morphometric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) datasets across laboratories around the world, and share the data with the larger scientific community.

For more detail on the project, visit the website at http://fcon_1000.projects.nitrc.org/indi/indiPRIME.html