This lesson is a general overview of overarching concepts in neuroinformatics research, with a particular focus on clinical approaches to defining, measuring, studying, diagnosing, and treating various brain disorders. Also described are the complex, multi-level nature of brain disorders and the data associated with them, from genes and individual cells up to cortical microcircuits and whole-brain network dynamics. Given the heterogeneity of brain disorders and their underlying mechanisms, this lesson lays out a case for multiscale neuroscience data integration.

This lesson describes the fundamentals of genomics, from central dogma to design and implementation of GWAS, to the computation, analysis, and interpretation of polygenic risk scores. 

This lesson contains the slides (pptx) of a lecture discussing the necessary concepts and tools for taking into account population stratification and admixture in the context of genome-wide association studies (GWAS). The free-access software Tractor and its advantages in GWAS are also discussed. 

This lesson is an overview of transcriptomics, from fundamental concepts of the central dogma and RNA sequencing at the single-cell level, to how genetic expression underlies diversity in cell phenotypes. 

This lesson describes the principles underlying functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), tractography, and parcellation. These tools and concepts are explained in a broader context of neural connectivity and mental health. 

In this tutorial on simulating whole-brain activity using Python, participants can follow along using corresponding code and repositories, learning the basics of neural oscillatory dynamics, evoked responses and EEG signals, ultimately leading to the design of a network model of whole-brain anatomical connectivity. 

This lesson breaks down the principles of Bayesian inference and how it relates to cognitive processes and functions like learning and perception. It is then explained how cognitive models can be built using Bayesian statistics in order to investigate how our brains interface with their environment. 

This lesson corresponds to slides 1-64 in the PDF below. 

This lesson briefly goes over the outline of the Neuroscience for Machine Learners course. 

This lesson contains practical exercises which accompanies the first few lessons of the Neuroscience for Machine Learners (Neuro4ML) course. 

Whereas the previous two lessons described the biophysical and signalling properties of individual neurons, this lesson describes properties of those units when part of larger networks. 

This lesson goes over some examples of how machine learners and computational neuroscientists go about designing and building neural network models inspired by biological brain systems. 

This lesson delves into the human nervous system and the immense cellular, connectomic, and functional sophistication therein. 

This lesson characterizes different types of learning in a neuroscientific and cellular context, and various models employed by researchers to investigate the mechanisms involved. 

In this lesson, you will learn about different approaches to modeling learning in neural networks, particularly focusing on system parameters such as firing rates and synaptic weights impact a network. 

This lesson explores how researchers try to understand neural networks, particularly in the case of observing neural activity. 

This video briefly goes over the exercises accompanying Week 6 of the Neuroscience for Machine Learners (Neuro4ML) course, Understanding Neural Networks.

In this lesson, you will hear about some of the open issues in the field of neuroscience, as well as a discussion about whether neuroscience works, and how can we know?

This lecture provides an introduction to the Brain Imaging Data Structure (BIDS), a standard for organizing human neuroimaging datasets.

This tutorial covers the fundamentals of collaborating with Git and GitHub.

This book was written with the goal of introducing researchers and students in a variety of research fields to the intersection of data science and neuroimaging. This book reflects our own experience of doing research at the intersection of data science and neuroimaging and it is based on our experience working with students and collaborators who come from a variety of backgrounds and have a variety of reasons for wanting to use data science approaches in their work. The tools and ideas that we chose to write about are all tools and ideas that we have used in some way in our own research. Many of them are tools that we use on a daily basis in our work. This was important to us for a few reasons: the first is that we want to teach people things that we ourselves find useful. Second, it allowed us to write the book with a focus on solving specific analysis tasks. For example, in many of the chapters you will see that we walk you through ideas while implementing them in code, and with data. We believe that this is a good way to learn about data analysis, because it provides a connecting thread from scientific questions through the data and its representation to implementing specific answers to these questions. Finally, we find these ideas compelling and fruitful. That’s why we were drawn to them in the first place. We hope that our enthusiasm about the ideas and tools described in this book will be infectious enough to convince the readers of their value.