Imagine you are a dwarf… Your mission: trace neurons and turn an undergrads’dirty job into a fun game.

1. Emma BARME, Ronan DUCHESNE, Valentine
FEDERICO et Flora PLESSIER
ENS DE LYON, FRANCE
Advisor: Pr. Brian CHEN, CENTRE FOR RESEARCH
NEUROSCIENCE, MCGILL, MONTRÉAL, QUÉBEC
IN

3. The mission: turning an undergrads’
dirty job into a fun game
• Body cell size
• Neurite (axons and
dendrites) length
• Neurite branching
• Cell intensity
• …

4. NeuronJ: an example of semiautomated neuron tracing software

5. NeuronJ

6. From the tracing to the measures
Body cell size
Neurite’s length and branching complexity
Fluorescence intensity

7. Once upon a time…
Imagine you are a dwarf…
Complete maps
Level
Buy more maps
Control other
players’ map
Help other players
Buy stuff for your
avatar

8. For what kind of players?
Those who enjoy helping
research
They play games like
Fold it or EyeWire
Those who enjoy puzzles
As in Sudoku, images range
from very easy to
demoniac…
Those who enjoy
accumulating
They play games that have no
other purpose than getting
more and more points/
money/…
They play games on the
Internet, often on social
networks

9. New ideas proposed to us during
the week-end
• Using the Xtribe plateform to ease the
coding process
• Extending the game to other kind of
pictures (tracing neurons in two contiguous
pictures; cartography…)
• Making a software that is able to learn from
the players’ strategies to become completely
automated

10. Emma BARME, Ronan DUCHESNE, Valentine
FEDERICO et Flora PLESSIER
ENS DE LYON, FRANCE
Advisor: Pr. Brian CHEN, CENTRE FOR RESEARCH
NEUROSCIENCE, MCGILL, MONTRÉAL, QUÉBEC
Thank you for your
attention!
IN