Ethical conduct of science, good governance of data, and accelerated translation to the clinic are key to high-calibre open neuroscience.  Everyday practitioners of science must be sensitized to a range of ethical considerations in their research, some having especially to do with open data-sharing. The lessons included in this course introduce a number of these topics and end with concrete guidance for participant consent and de-identification of data.

This couse is the opening module for the University of Toronto's Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics' virtual learning series Solving Problems in Mental Health Using Multi-Scale Computational Neuroscience. Lessons in this course introduce participants to the study of brain disorders, starting from elemental units like genes and neurons, eventually building up to whole-brain modelling and global activity patterns.

As technological improvements continue to facilitate innovations in the mental health space, researchers and clinicians are faced with novel opportunities and challenges regarding study design, diagnoses, treatments, and follow-up care. This course includes a lecture outlining these new developments, as well as a workshop which introduces users to Synapse, an open-source platform for collaborative data analysis. 

The human mind is a complex system that produces, processes, and transmits information in an incomparable manner. Human thoughts and actions depend profoundly on the proper function of neurons. If this function is disrupted, degeneration and disease can be the consequence. This course provides insights into state-of-the-art views on neurodegenerative, neuropsychiatric, and neuroimmunological disorders as well as clinical neuroanatomy and clinical aspects of brain imaging.

This course, consisting of one lecture and two workshops, is presented by the Computational Genomics Lab at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and University of Toronto. The lecture deals with single-cell and bulk level transciptomics, while the two hands-on workshops introduce users to transcriptomic data types (e.g., RNAseq) and how to perform analyses in specific use cases (e.g., cellular changes in major depression). 

This course includes both lectures and tutorials around the management and analysis of genomic data in clinical research and care. Participants are led through the basics of genome-wide association studies (GWAS), genotypes, and polygenic risk scores, as well as novel concepts and tools for more sophisticated consideration of population stratification in GWAS.

This course offers lectures on the origin and functional significance of certain electrophysiological signals in the brain, as well as a hands-on tutorial on how to simulate, statistically evaluate, and visualize such signals. Participants will learn the simulation of signals at different spatial scales, including single-cell (neuronal spiking) and global (EEG), and how these may serve as biomarkers in the evaluation of mental health data.

The Neurodata Without Borders: Neurophysiology project (NWB, https://www.nwb.org/) is an effort to standardize the description and storage of neurophysiology data and metadata. NWB enables data sharing and reuse and reduces the energy-barrier to applying data analytics both within and across labs. Several laboratories, including the Allen Institute for Brain Science, have wholeheartedly adopted NWB.

Much like neuroinformatics, data science uses techniques from computational science to derive meaningful results from large complex datasets. In this session, we will explore the relationship between neuroinformatics and data science, by emphasizing a range of data science approaches and activities, ranging from the development and application of statistical methods, through the establishment of communities and platforms, and through the implementation of open-source software tools.

Most neuroscience journals request authors to make their data publicly available in appropriate repositories. The requirements and policies put forward by journals vary, and the services provided for different types of data also differ considerably across repositories.

This course corresponds to the third session of talks given at INCF's Neuroinformatics Assembly 2023. In this session, the talks revolve around the idea of cross-platform data integration, discussing processes and solutions for rapidly developing an integrated workflow across independent systems for the US BRAIN Initiative Cell Census. 

Given the extreme interconnectedness of the human brain, studying any one cerebral area in isolation may lead to spurious results or incomplete, if not problematic, interpretations. This course introduces participants to the various spatial scales of neuroscience and the fundamentals of whole-brain modelling, used to generate a more thorough picture of brain activity.

Sessions from the INCF Neuroinformatics Assembly 2022 day 1. 

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This course tackles the issue of maintaining ethical research and healthcare practices in the age of increasingly powerful technological tools like machine learning and artificial intelligence. While there is great potential for innovation and improvement in the clinical space thanks to AI development, lecturers in this course advocate for a greater emphasis on human-centric care, calling for algorithm design which takes the full intersectionality of individuals into account.

This course corresponds to the first session of talks given at INCF's Neuroinformatics Assembly 2023. The sessions consists of several lectures, focusing on using the principles of FAIR (findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability) to inform future directions in neuroscience and neuroinformatics. In particular, these talks deal with the development of knowledge graphs and ontologies. 

The dimensionality and size of datasets in many fields of neuroscience research require massively parallel computing power.  Fortunately, the maturity and accessibility of virtualization technologies has made it feasible to run the same analysis environments on platforms ranging from single laptop computers up to high-performance computing networks.

This course contains sessions from the first day of INCF's Neuroinformatics Assembly 2022.

The importance of Research Data Management in the conduct of open and reproducible science is better understood and technically supported than ever, and many of the underlying principles apply as much to everyday activities of a single researcher as to large-scale, multi-center open data sharing.

This course includes both lectures and tutorials around the management and analysis of genomic data in clinical research and care. Participants are led through the basics of genome-wide association studies (GWAS), genotypes, and polygenic risk scores, as well as novel concepts and tools for more sophisticated consideration of population stratification in GWAS.

A virtual workshop with lectures and hands-on tutorials that will teach participants how to use open-source Miniscopes for in vivo calcium imaging. This workshop is designed to introduce all aspects of using Miniscopes, including basic principles of Miniscope design and imaging, how to build and attach a Miniscope, how to implant a GRIN lens for imaging deep structures, and how to analyze imaging data.