Open source tools for large-scale neuroscience

- New recording technologies generating massive, complex data sets.
- Analysis workflows are complex, diverse, and fundamentally exploratory.
- Rich open-source ecosystem for distributed computing, machine learning, and interactive visualization.
- Cultural shifts required to embrace collaborative, open-source development.

New technologies for monitoring and manipulating the nervous system promise exciting biology but pose challenges for analysis and computation. Solutions can be found in the form of modern approaches to distributed computing, machine learning, and interactive visualization. But embracing these new technologies will require a cultural shift: away from independent efforts and proprietary methods and toward an open source and collaborative neuroscience.