• The Department of Biotechnology’s (DBT) National Brain Research Centre (NBRC) has developed a unique initiative focused on making certified neuroimaging, neurochemical, neuropsychological data and analytics accessible to researchers for managing brain disorders.

• According to the science and technology ministry, SWADESH is the first large-scale multimodal neuroimaging database designed specifically for the Indian population with big-data architecture and analytics for various disease categories under one platform.

• To strengthen Alzheimer’s disease research and help the scientific community come up with promising treatments, SWADESH proposes a big-data architecture that manages and analyses various  modules.

These are:

• Neurodegenerative (Alzheimer’s disease, mild cognitive impairment, and Parkinson’s disease) 

• Neuropsychiatric (schizophrenia and bipolar disorder)

• Neurodevelopmental (autism and epilepsy)

• COVID-19-related disorders, other disorders, and healthy subjects.

• Backed by a dedicated storage system, SWADESH provides quality control, data analysis reports, and data backups. Its development will facilitate the integration of multi-site data and collaborative research worldwide.

• Currently, SWADESH has data of 500 Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment patients and 70 Parkinson’s disease patients. It also includes data of 600 healthy old individuals and 800 healthy young individuals in the control group.

• DBT-NBRC has developed several clinical research tools through SWADESH. The team is working to expand the project to include rich multimodal neuroimaging datasets for healthy and diseased cases.

National Brain Research Centre

• National Brain Research Centre in Haryana’s Manesar is a premier institute in India dedicated to neuroscience research and education. It has been recognised as an ‘Institution of Excellence’ by the government.

• NBRC is engaged in understanding brain functions in health and disease through basic and clinically oriented research. 

• It is an autonomous institute funded by the department of biotechnology.

• The mandate of NBRC is to pursue research to understand brain function in health and disease, generate trained human resources to carry out interdisciplinary research in neuroscience, and promote neuroscience in India through networking among institutions across the country.

Manorama Yearbook app is now available on Google Play Store and iOS App Store