This course corresponds to the second session of INCF's Neuroinformatics Assembly 2023. This series of talks continues a discussion of FAIR principles from the first session, with a greater emphasis on brain data (humans and animals) atlases for data analysis and integation. 

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 course, arranged by EPFL and also available as a MOOC on edX, aims for a mechanistic description of mammalian brain function at the level of individual nerve cells and their synaptic interactions.

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.

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.

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 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.

Sessions from the INCF Neuroinformatics Assembly 2022 Day 3. 

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This course features tutorials on how to use Allen atlases and digital brain atlasing tools, including operational and user features of the Allen Mouse Brain Atlas, as well as the Allen Institute's 3D viewing tool, Brain Explorer®.

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 short course covers Hypothes.is, an annotation tool that enables users to collaboratively annotate course readings and other internet resources.

Features of Hypothes.is:

This course consists of several lightning talks from the second day of INCF's Neuroinformatics Assembly 2023. Covering a wide range of topics, these brief talks provide snapshots of various neuroinformatic efforts such as brain-computer interface standards, dealing with multimodal animal MRI datasets, distributed data management, and several more. 

This course consists of one lesson and one tutorial, focusing on the neural connectivity measures derived from neuroimaging, specifically from methods like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI). Additional tools such as tractography and parcellation are discussed in the context of brain connectivity and mental health. The tutorial leads participants through the computation of brain connectomes from fMRI data. 

In this module, you will work with human EEG data recorded during a steady-state visual evoked potential study (SSVEP, aka flicker). You will learn about spectral analysis, alpha activity, and topographical mapping. The MATLAB code introduces functions, sorting, and correlation analysis.

Probing the organization of interactions within and across neuronal populations is a promising approach to understanding the principles of brain processing. The rapidly advancing technical capabilities to record from hundreds of neurons in parallel open up new possibilities to disentangle the correlative structure within neuronal networks. However, the complexity of these massive data streams calls for novel, tractable analysis tools that exploit the parallel aspect of the data.

As research methods and experimental technologies become ever more sophisticated, the amount of health-related data per individual which has become accessible is vast, giving rise to a corresponding need for cross-domain data integration, whole-person modelling, and improved precision medicine. This course provides lessons describing state of the art methods and repositories, as well as a tutorial on computational methods for data integration. 

Sessions from the INCF Neuroinformatics Assembly 2022 Day 3. 

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The International Brain Initiative (IBI) is a consortium of the world’s major large-scale brain initiatives and other organizations with a vested interest in catalyzing and advancing neuroscience research through international collaboration and knowledge sharing. This session will introduce the IBI and the current efforts of the Data Standards and Sharing Working Group with a view to gain input from a wider neuroscience and neuroinformatics community. 

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.