Cognitive Atlas
Overview
The Cognitive Atlas is a collaborative ontology of cognitive processes and psychological tasks used in neuroimaging research, developed by the Poldrack Lab at Stanford University. It provides a controlled vocabulary of mental processes such as working memory, cognitive control, and episodic memory, alongside the experimental tasks that measure them. Its primary function in the open neuroscience ecosystem is to enable cross-study comparison of fMRI datasets: when datasets from different labs annotate their tasks using Cognitive Atlas terms, meta-analysis tools can query which brain regions activate across studies measuring the same cognitive process, regardless of task implementation.
Key Concepts
The ontology has two main branches. Cognitive concepts are mental processes with formal definitions and hierarchical relationships. Tasks are specific experimental paradigms linked to the concepts they measure.
Connections
- Used with: BIDS (task field references Cognitive Atlas identifiers)
Resources
- https://www.cognitiveatlas.org
- https://www.cognitiveatlas.org/api (REST API for programmatic access)
- https://doi.org/10.3389/fninf.2011.00017 (Poldrack et al. 2011, Frontiers — Cognitive Atlas paper)