# NWB — Neurodata Without Borders ## Overview NWB (Neurodata Without Borders) is the community standard for neurophysiology data, covering intracellular and extracellular electrophysiology, calcium imaging, optogenetics, and behavioural data. Initiated in 2015 with funding from the [[NIH BRAIN Initiative]] and co-founded with the [[Allen Institute for Brain Science]], NWB addresses the absence of a shared data format that made cross-lab reuse and meta-analysis of electrophysiology data difficult. It uses HDF5 (and optionally Zarr) as its underlying container format, with a rigorously defined schema organising neural data and all associated metadata into a single self-describing file. It is governed by the [[NWB Working Group]] and is the mandatory format for the [[DANDI Archive]]. ## Data Types NWB handles the full range of neurophysiology and systems neuroscience data, including extracellular electrophysiology (spike-sorted unit data, raw LFP, electrode geometry), intracellular electrophysiology (patch-clamp in current and voltage clamp), calcium imaging (two-photon and wide-field fluorescence, ROI segmentations, ΔF/F traces), optogenetics (stimulus parameters and light delivery metadata), and behavioural data (positional tracking, task events, stimuli, reward delivery). ## NWB Data Extensions The NDX (NWB Data Extension) mechanism allows community-developed extensions to the core NWB schema for lab-specific or modality-specific data types. Extensions are versioned Python packages published on PyPI and catalogued at https://nwb-extensions.github.io. ## Relationship to BIDS NWB and [[BIDS]] serve complementary roles. BIDS organises datasets at the file and directory level across modalities, while NWB is a rich single-file format for neurophysiology recording sessions. BIDS has a dedicated extension proposal (BEP032) for organising NWB files within BIDS structure, and the [[DANDI Archive]] supports both formats. ## Connections - Governed by: [[NWB Working Group]] - Endorsed by: [[INCF]] - Co-founded with: [[Allen Institute for Brain Science]] - Funded by: [[NIH BRAIN Initiative]] (original development) - Integrates with: [[DANDI Archive]] (mandatory format), [[BIDS]] (BEP032), [[HED]] (event annotation) ## Resources - https://www.nwb.org - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.78362 (NWB 2.0 paper, Rübel et al. 2022) - https://github.com/NeurodataWithoutBorders (GitHub organisation) - https://dandiarchive.org (DANDI Archive) - https://nwb-extensions.github.io (NDX extension catalogue)