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 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 Plato’s concept of rationality and Aristotle’s concept of empiricism, and the enduring discussion between rationalism and empiricism to this day.
This lecture goes into further detail about the hard problem of developing a scientific discipline for subjective consciousness.
This lecture covers a lot of post-war developments in the science of the mind, focusing first on the cognitive revolution, and concluding with living machines.
This lesson gives a brief introduction to the course Neuroscience for Machine Learners (Neuro4ML).
This lesson briefly goes over the outline of the Neuroscience for Machine Learners course.
This lesson covers the history of neuroscience and machine learning, and the story of how these two seemingly disparate fields are increasingly merging.
In this lesson, you will learn about the current challenges facing the integration of machine learning and neuroscience.
This lesson delves into the the structure of one of the brain's most elemental computational units, the neuron, and how said structure influences computational neural network models.
In this lesson you will learn how machine learners and neuroscientists construct abstract computational models based on various neurophysiological signalling properties.
This lesson goes over the basic mechanisms of neural synapses, the space between neurons where signals may be transmitted.
While the previous lesson in the Neuro4ML course dealt with the mechanisms involved in individual synapses, this lesson discusses how synapses and their neurons' firing patterns may change over time.
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 describes spike timing-dependent plasticity (STDP), a biological process that adjusts the strength of connections between neurons in the brain, and how one can implement or mimic this process in a computational model. You will also find links for practical exercises at the bottom of this page.
In this lesson, you will learn about some of the many methods to train spiking neural networks (SNNs) with either no attempt to use gradients, or only use gradients in a limited or constrained way.
In this lesson, you will learn how to train spiking neural networks (SNNs) with a surrogate gradient method.
As the previous lesson of this course described how researchers acquire neural data, this lesson will discuss how to go about interpreting and analysing the data.
In this lesson you will learn about the motivation behind manipulating neural activity, and what forms that may take in various experimental designs.