About behavtaskatlas

Task descriptions across behavioral neuroscience are usually written for a specific paper or lab, which makes them hard to compare. The atlas separates the operational variables of a task (stimulus, evidence schedule, choice geometry, response modality, feedback, training stage) from cognitive interpretations (perceptual decision-making, evidence accumulation, etc.), keeps both as YAML records, and links them to reproducible analyses against open public data.

Every record is a small file under version control. Every analysis is a script with pinned source data, recorded in provenance JSON. The catalog site you are reading is generated from those records.

• Task family — the reusable operational idea (e.g. random-dot motion, visual change detection).
• Protocol — one concrete variant of a family, with species, stimulus, choice, and timing fully specified.
• Dataset — a pointer to public or private behavioral data, tagged with a source_data_level so reports rest-on-raw vs rest-on-figure-source-data is visible up front.
• Vertical slice — one protocol bound to one dataset through a reproducible local pipeline (download → harmonize → analyze → report). Each slice produces canonical-trial CSVs, summary plots, and provenance.
• Implementation — task-control code or reference implementation, distinct from the dataset that contains the resulting behavior.

Every record is a Pydantic-validated YAML file. Cross-references between families, protocols, datasets, and slices are checked, and controlled vocabularies (modality, evidence type, choice type, response modality, source data level, curation status) are enforced. The release-check command produces a release-readiness artifact that gates publishable JSON exports.

Contributions go through GitHub pull requests against the YAML records. Add or edit a record, run bash scripts/ci.sh locally, open a PR; Vercel will build a preview deploy automatically. The repository includes a CLAUDE.md to make Claude Code sessions productive without needing to read the full source.

github.com/aeronjl/behavtaskatlas

Slice analysis artifacts are versioned as GitHub Releases tagged slice-artifacts-<date>-<sha>. Cite a specific release tag rather than the live URL when reproducibility matters. A persistent DOI via Zenodo is planned for a future release.