# Neural Data Provenance
**Domain:** Neuroinformatics / Data Governance
**Doc Type:** Technical Concept Node
**Maturity:** Essential Practice
**Related:** [[BCI Metadata]], [[DICOM]], [[Brain Imaging Data Structure]], [[Honest Computing]]
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## Definition
**Neural data provenance** is the traceable history of how a neural record was acquired, calibrated, transformed, annotated, decoded, copied, fused, accessed, and interpreted. It identifies devices, software, versions, people, timestamps, parameters, source files, derived artifacts, and custody changes.
## Key insight
Long-lived bits are insufficient if later readers cannot distinguish raw measurement, preprocessing, human annotation, model inference, and generative completion. Provenance is therefore a condition of scientific and personal interpretability.