BALSA News
  • May. 12, 2023 -

    New features for BALSA have been released!:

    *user controlled links to documentation files can now be displayed on the study page
    *shareable viewer link codes that users can email to those they want to have viewer access to their study
    *a fix to prevent scene descriptions ending prematurely if they contain a '<' character
    *faster automatic messages from BALSA registration
    *increased security features
  • May. 17, 2022 -

    BALSA has transitioned to a new authentication system backend for handling logins. Due to the difference in encryption, we cannot simply transfer existing passwords for current users. BALSA account holders have been sent an email requesting a one-time password reset. Doing this proactively will avoid a potentially confusing ‘Login failed’ on the next attempt at a BALSA login. To reset your password, go to balsa.wustl.edu, click "login", then "forgotten password", and type in your username. You will immediately receive an email with a password reset link.

    If you are new to BALSA, you may register for an account and agree to any data use terms. Under the new authentication system, agreement to the HCP Open Access Data Use Terms in ConnectomeDB are not transferred to BALSA as the accounts in the two platforms are now separate.
  • Aug. 23, 2021 -

    Updates to BALSA have been released!  

    New Features:
    *an updated, consistent style has been applied to all BALSA pages
    *upgraded table display, sorting, filtering, and searching
    *improved reCAPTCHA ID function
  • Sep. 18, 2020 -

    BALSA has been updated to include versioning, which allows study owners to track changes to their shared scene data from the study page and continue to edit a working version of the dataset even when the study is in public, approved, or submitted status. All instructions on the Submit Data to BALSA pages have been updated as well.
  • Jun. 08, 2019 -

    BALSA is at 2019 OHBM in Rome June 9-13! Come see BALSA study creation, upload, and curation in action at Table Top #1 (next to the bar)! Learn about creating scenes in Connectome Workbench, the process of contributing your own studies for public sharing or private collaboration, and publicizing your study and associated publication.
  • May. 24, 2018 -

    BALSA is now accepting user-submitted study data! Click the button labelled 'About Data Submission' to get started.
  • Jul. 20, 2016 -

    Nature study now available in BALSA: A Multi-modal Parcellation of Human Cerebral Cortex!

    Major results by Human Connectome Project (https://www.humanconnectome.org/) investigators using HCP data and methods were published in Nature July 20, 2016.

    The study, A multi-modal parcellation of human cerebral cortex, led by Matthew Glasser and David Van Essen of Washington University, used information derived from structural and functional MRI data collected on 210 HCP subjects to create a new 180 region per hemisphere map of the cerebral cortex of the human brain, including 97 new areas not previously reported using other approaches. The new cortical map is being referred to as HCP Multimodal parcellation, version 1 (HCP_MMP1.0), as updated versions are expected as more detailed data becomes available in future.

    The multimodal surface matching algorithm pioneered by HCP investigators at Oxford U was key in precisely aligning the individual brains before analysis. The maps were then applied to individuals from an independent set of 210 HCP subjects using a machine-learning classifier to recognize the multi-modal ‘fingerprint’ of each cortical area.

    The parcellation and Connectome Workbench scenes for each of the main article and supplemental figures are being shared in BALSA: https://balsa.wustl.edu/study/show/RVVG

    The parcellation for use as a reference is most easily accessed in the Glasser_et_al_2016_HCP_MMP1.0_5_StudyDataset.scene (https://balsa.wustl.edu/sceneFile/show/L731) study dataset.
  • Jun. 22, 2016 -

    Journal of Neuroscience study added: Using Diffusion Tractography to Predict Cortical Connection Strength and Distance: A quantitative comparison with Tracers in the Monkey

    This study compares high resolution connectivity derived from diffusion tractography with
    published results using neuroanatomical tracers.  The authors found the correlation of tractography’s quantitatively estimated connection strengths versus tracer to be twice that of a previous study. Using a novel method for calculating interareal cortical distances, they showed that tractography based estimates of connection strength have useful predictive power beyond just interareal separation.
  • Mar. 25, 2016 -

    BALSA Alpha now live!