Neuroinf.it is a project coming out from the Working Group on Neuroinformatics established within the Global Science Forum of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The Neuroinformatics Working Group has supported the creation, in 15 countries belonging to the Working Group, of National Portals of Neuroscience and Neuroinformatics in order to give a reasonable and easy-to-use access to this scientific field, and also to supply knowledge, working tools, and neurological applications which can be useful for: citizens, public institutions, doctors and researchers. All National Portals of Neuroscience - Neuroinformatics are developed to be integrated in a unique network able to cover all aspects of this new extensive and interdisciplinary field.

Neuroinformatics is the point of contact between Neuroscience and Information Science worlds. In this environment, devices and tools for understanding the structure and the functionality of the human nervous system are being developed. This new discipline receives therefore contributions from medical sciences, engineering, biology, physics, mathematics and informatics. Neuroinformatics aims at an advancement in the scientific knowledge (basic research), at a progress in clinical methodologies (applied research) and at new industrial solutions, for instance in the field of robotics, through the comparison between the different approaches of natural and artificial systems.

The Italian Portal of Neuroscience - Neuroinformatics precisely fits into this wide-ranging approach. Taking into account the huge amount of information and services concerning the Neuroscience field and supplied in the Internet network, an effort has been done in order to avoid the duplication of already existing resources and also to concentrate the attention on more specific goals for which a more stable knowledge is available. The analysis of mental diseases has been proposed as the reference topic. It has been decided to create a virtual place in which every hypothetical end-user can find what he/she wants about a specific mental disease. The Portal must therefore provide an easy, guided and authoritative support, in order to find out the information already existing in the Internet network about the argument of interest and to supply information and services still lacking on the network.

Among all mental diseases, we have kept the attention on the Alzheimer disease, as pilot-study that must be extended subsequently to all other mental diseases.