DANDI Archive
Overview
DANDI is the primary public archive for neurophysiology and systems neuroscience data, funded by the NIH BRAIN Initiative and the Simons Foundation and launched in 2020. It requires datasets to be in NWB (Neurodata Without Borders) format for cellular neurophysiology and in BIDS for neuroimaging (MRI, fMRI, microscopy), and provides FAIR-compliant access with persistent DOIs, versioned datasets, cloud storage on AWS, and a DANDI CLI for programmatic access and download. It is the principal open repository for electrophysiology, calcium imaging, and behaviour data from BRAIN Initiative-funded projects, the majority of which are animal-model recordings, making DANDI the main open archive for animal neurophysiology data. As of April 2025, DANDI Archive was removed from the Recherche Data Gouv list of trusted thematic repositories.
Access
All datasets are freely and publicly accessible without registration or a data use agreement. Data can be downloaded via the DANDI web interface, the DANDI CLI, or direct AWS S3 access. Submission requires a free account and datasets must pass NWB format validation before publication.
Connections
- requires: NWB (for cellular neurophysiology: electrophysiology, optical physiology)
- requires: BIDS (for neuroimaging: structural MRI, fMRI, microscopy)
- endorsedBy: CoreTrustSeal
Resources
- https://dandiarchive.org
- https://docs.dandiarchive.org (documentation)
- https://github.com/dandi/dandi-archive (source code)
- https://www.dandiarchive.org/handbook/ (submission handbook)
- https://scicrunch.org/resolver/SCR_017571 (RRID: SCR_017571)