This lesson provides an overview of the current status in the field of neuroscientific ontologies, presenting examples of data organization and standards, particularly from neuroimaging and electrophysiology. 

The lesson introduces the Brain Imaging Data Structure (BIDS), the community standard for organizing, curating, and sharing neuroimaging and associated data. The session focuses on understanding the BIDS framework, learning its data structure and validation processes.

This session moves from BIDS basics into analysis workflows, focusing on how to turn raw, BIDS-organized data into derivatives using BIDS Apps and containers for reproducible processing. It compares end-to-end pipelines across fMRI and PET (and notes EEG/MEG), explains typical preprocessing choices, and shows how standardized inputs plus containerized tools (Docker/AppTainer) yield consistent, auditable outputs.

The session explains GDPR rules around data sharing for research in Europe, the distinction between law and ethics, and introduces practical solutions for securely sharing sensitive datasets. Researchers have more flexibility than commonly assumed: scientific research is considered a public interest task, so explicit consent for data sharing isn’t legally required, though transparency and informing participants remain ethically important. The talk also introduces publicneuro.eu, a controlled-access platform that enables sharing neuroimaging datasets with open metadata, DOIs, and customizable access restrictions while ensuring GDPR compliance.

This session introduces the PET-to-BIDS (PET2BIDS) library, a toolkit designed to simplify the conversion and preparation of PET imaging datasets into BIDS-compliant formats. It supports multiple data types and formats (e.g., DICOM, ECAT7+, nifti, JSON), integrates seamlessly with Excel-based metadata, and provides automated routines for metadata updates, blood data conversion, and JSON synchronization. PET2BIDS improves human readability by mapping complex reconstruction names into standardized, descriptive labels and offers extensive documentation, examples, and video tutorials to make adoption easier for researchers.

This session introduces the PET-to-BIDS (PET2BIDS) library, a toolkit designed to simplify the conversion and preparation of PET imaging datasets into BIDS-compliant formats. It supports multiple data types and formats (e.g., DICOM, ECAT7+, nifti, JSON), integrates seamlessly with Excel-based metadata, and provides automated routines for metadata updates, blood data conversion, and JSON synchronization. PET2BIDS improves human readability by mapping complex reconstruction names into standardized, descriptive labels and offers extensive documentation, examples, and video tutorials to make adoption easier for researchers.

This session dives into practical PET tooling on BIDS data—showing how to run motion correction, register PET↔MRI, extract time–activity curves, and generate standardized PET-BIDS derivatives with clear QC reports. It introduces modular BIDS Apps (head-motion correction, TAC extraction), a full pipeline (PETPrep), and a PET/MRI defacer, with guidance on parameters, outputs, provenance, and why Dockerized containers are the reliable way to run them at scale.

This session introduces two PET quantification tools—bloodstream for processing arterial blood data and kinfitr for kinetic modeling and quantification—built to work with BIDS/BIDS-derivatives and containers. Bloodstream fuses autosampler and manual measurements (whole blood, plasma, parent fraction) using interpolation or fitted models (incl. hierarchical GAMs) to produce a clean arterial input function (AIF) and whole-blood curves with rich QC reports ready. TAC data (e.g., from PETPrep) and blood (e.g., from bloodstream) can be ingested using kinfitr to run reproducible, GUI-driven analyses: define combined ROIs, calculate weighting factors, estimate blood–tissue delay, choose and chain models (e.g., 2TCM → 1TCM with parameter inheritance), and export parameters/diagnostics. Both are available as Docker apps; workflows emphasize configuration files, reports, and standard outputs to support transparency and reuse.

The goal of computational modeling in behavioral and psychological science is using mathematical models to characterize behavioral (or neural) data. Over the past decade, this practice has revolutionized social psychological science (and neuroscience) by allowing researchers to formalize theories as constrained mathematical models and test specific hypotheses to explain unobservable aspects of complex social cognitive processes and behaviors. This course is composed of 4 modules in the format of Jupyter Notebooks. This course comprises lecture-based, discussion-based, and lab-based instruction. At least one-third of class sessions will be hands-on. We will discuss relevant book chapters and journal articles, and work with simulated and real data using the Python programming language (no prior programming experience necessary) as we survey some selected areas of research at the intersection of computational modeling and social behavior. These selected topics will span a broad set of social psychological abilities including (1) learning from and for others, (2) learning about others, and (3) social influence on decision-making and mental states. Rhoads, S. A. & Gan, L. (2022). Computational models of human social behavior and neuroscience - An open educational course and Jupyter Book to advance computational training.  ​​​Journal of Open Source Education, 5(47), 146. https://doi.org/10.21105/jose.00146