Emma BARME, Ronan DUCHESNE, Valentine FEDERICO et Flora PLESSIER

ENS DE LYON, FRANCE Advisor: Pr. Brian CHEN, CENTRE FOR RESEARCH IN

NEUROSCIENCE, MCGILL, MONTRÉAL, QUÉBEC

The mission: turning an undergrads’ dirty job into a fun game

• Body cell size

• Neurite (axons and dendrites) length

• Neurite branching

• Cell intensity

• …

NeuronJ: an example of semi-automated neuron tracing software

NeuronJ

From the tracing to the measures

Body cell size Neurite’s length and branching complexity

Fluorescence intensity

Once upon a time…

Imagine you are a dwarf…

Complete maps

Control other players’ map

Help other players

Buy more maps

Buy stuff for your avatar

Level

For what kind of players?

Those who enjoy helping research

They play games like

Fold it or EyeWire

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

Those who enjoy puzzles

As in Sudoku, images range from very easy to

demoniac…

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

Emma BARME, Ronan DUCHESNE, Valentine FEDERICO et Flora PLESSIER

ENS DE LYON, FRANCE Advisor: Pr. Brian CHEN, CENTRE FOR RESEARCH IN

NEUROSCIENCE, MCGILL, MONTRÉAL, QUÉBEC

Thank you for your attention!