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.

This course consists of three lessons, each corresponding to a lightning talk given at the first day of INCF's Neuroinformatics Assembly 2023. By following along these brief talks, you will hear about topics such as open source tools for computer vision, tools for the integration of various MRI dataset formats, as well as international data governance. 

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. 

In this course we present the TVB-EBRAINS integrated workflows that have been developed in the Human Brain Project in the third funding phase (“SGA2”) in the Co-Design Project 8 “The Virtual Brain”. 

The workshop will include interactive seminars given by selected experts in the field covering all aspects of (FAIR) small animal MRI data acquisition, analysis, and sharing. The seminars will be followed by hands-on training where participants will perform use case scenarios using software established by the organizers. This will include an introduction to the basics of using command line interfaces, Python installation, working with Docker/Singularity containers, Datalad/Git, and BIDS.

Bayesian inference (using prior knowledge to generate more accurate predictions about future events or outcomes) has become increasingly applied to the fields of neuroscience and neuroinformatics. In this course, participants are taught how Bayesian statistics may be used to build cognitive models of processes like learning or perception. This course also offers theoretical and practical instruction on dynamic causal modeling as applied to fMRI and EEG data.

This workshop delves into the need for, structure of, tools for, and use of hierarchical event descriptor (HED) annotation to prepare neuroimaging time series data for storing, sharing, and advanced analysis. HED are a controlled vocabulary of terms describing events in a machine-actionable form so that algorithms can use the information without manual recoding.

This introductory-level course provide learners with an introduction to the field of neuroethics and spans the ethics of neuroscience to the neuroscience of ethics. The ethics of neuroscience lectures cover the ethical issues that arise in device/drug enhancement, imaging/monitoring, and social uses of neuroscience in the legal/justice system. The neuroscience of ethics lectures cover the origin of ethics (neural mechanisms and evolutionary origin).

Sessions from the INCF Neuroinformatics Assembly 2022 day 2. 

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This module introduces computational neuroscience by simulating neurons according to the AdEx model. You will learn about generative modeling, dynamical systems, and F-I curves. The MATLAB code introduces live scripts and functions.

Sessions from the INCF Neuroinformatics Assembly 2022 day 2. 

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Get up to speed about the fundamental principles of full brain network modeling using the open-source neuroinformatics platform The Virtual Brain (TVB). This simulation environment enables the biologically realistic modeling of whole-brain network dynamics across different brain scales, using personalized structural connectome-based approach.

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. 

Since their introduction in 2016, the FAIR data principles have gained increasing recognition and adoption in global neuroscience. FAIR defines a set of high level principles and practices for making digital objects, including data, software and workflows, Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. But FAIR is not a specification; it leaves many of the specifics up to individual scientific disciplines to define.

Over the last three decades, neuroimaging research has seen large strides in the scale, diversity, and complexity of studies, the open availability of data and methodological resources, the quality of instrumentation and multimodal studies, and the number of researchers and consortia. The awareness of rigor and reproducibility has increased with the advent of funding mandates, and with the work done by national and international brain initiatives.

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). 

The goal of this module is to work with action potential data taken from a publicly available database. You will learn about spike counts, orientation tuning, and spatial maps. The MATLAB code introduces data types, for-loops and vectorizations, indexing, and data visualization.