About CoCoMac

The macaque macroconnectivity database CoCoMac has been initiated and built up by prof. Rolf Kötter, first at the C. & O. Vogt Institute of Brain Research at the Henrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, later at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at the Radboud University Nijmegen, ending with a brief period at the Jülich Research Institute. While working on a major overhaul of the database and connectivity mapping engine, Rolf was struck by a tumor, which took his life after three years of battling with the disease. He passed away on June 9th 2010.

With the CoCoMac database and a wide array of offspring projects, Rolf has left an indelible imprint in the neuroinformatics field, as highlighted in several obituaries: by Klaas Stephan, Randy McIntosh and Claus Hilgetag; by the Radboud University; and by Markus Diesmann (systembiologie.de 2010-2, in German).

The ongoing work on the database has been adopted by the German INCF node (G-Node) and the Computational and Systems Neuroscience group of the Juelich Research Institute. The new database engine features an extensive search wizard and interactive browser. It also powers the Scalable Brain Atlas visual connectivity tool. A web-based data entry system is under development. Contact person for the current developments is dr. Rembrandt Bakker.