DatAR: Supporting Neuroscience Literature Exploration by Finding Relations Between Topics in Augmented Reality

Abstract

We present DatAR, an Augmented Reality prototype designed to support neuroscientists in finding fruitful directions to explore in their own research. DatAR provides an immersive analytics environment for exploring relations between topics published in the neuroscience literature. Neuroscientists need to analyse large numbers of publications in order to understand whether a potential experiment is likely to yield a valuable contribution. Using a user-centred design approach, we have identified useful tasks in collaboration with neuroscientists and implemented corresponding functionalities in DatAR. This facilitates querying and visualising relations between topics. Participating neuroscientists have stated that the DatAR prototype assists them in exploring and visualising seldom-mentioned direct relations and also indirect relations between brain regions and brain diseases. We present the latest incarnation of DatAR and illustrate the use of the prototype to carry out two realistic tasks to identify fruitful experiments.