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 is a hands-on tutorial on PLINK, the open source whole genome association analysis toolset. The aims of this tutorial are to teach users how to perform basic quality control on genetic datasets, as well as to identify and understand GWAS summary statistics.
This is a tutorial on using the open-source software PRSice to calculate a set of polygenic risk scores (PRS) for a study sample. Users will also learn how to read PRS into R, visualize distributions, and perform basic association analyses.
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 is a tutorial introducing participants to the basics of RNA-sequencing data and how to analyze its features using Seurat.
This tutorial demonstrates how to perform cell-type deconvolution in order to estimate how proportions of cell-types in the brain change in response to various conditions. While these techniques may be useful in addressing a wide range of scientific questions, this tutorial will focus on the cellular changes associated with major depression (MDD).
This lesson explains the fundamental principles of neuronal communication, such as neuronal spiking, membrane potentials, and cellular excitability, and how these electrophysiological features of the brain may be modelled and simulated digitally.
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.
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 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 lesson gives an introduction to the central concepts of machine learning, and how they can be applied in Python using the scikit-learn package.
This lecture covers the rationale for developing the DAQCORD, a framework for the design, documentation, and reporting of data curation methods in order to advance the scientific rigour, reproducibility, and analysis of data.