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 continues with the second workshop on reproducible science, focusing on additional open source tools for researchers and data scientists, such as the R programming language for data science, as well as associated tools like RStudio and R Markdown. Additionally, users are introduced to Python and iPython notebooks, Google Colab, and are given hands-on tutorials on how to create a Binder environment, as well as various containers in Docker and Singularity.
This lesson contains both a lecture and a tutorial component. The lecture (0:00-20:03 of YouTube video) discusses both the need for intersectional approaches in healthcare as well as the impact of neglecting intersectionality in patient populations. The lecture is followed by a practical tutorial in both Python and R on how to assess intersectional bias in datasets. Links to relevant code and data are found below.
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 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 lecture covers the emergence of cognitive science after the Second World War as an interdisciplinary field for studying the mind, with influences from anthropology, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence.
This lecture covers the history of behaviorism and the ultimate challenge to behaviorism.
This lecture covers various learning theories.
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 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 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 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.