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.

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 talk gives a brief overview of current efforts to collect and share the Brain Reference Architecture (BRA) data involved in the construction of a whole-brain architecture that assigns functions to major brain organs. 

This brief talk discusses the idea that music, as a naturalistic stimulus, offers a window into higher cognition and various levels of neural architecture.    

In this short talk you will learn about The Neural System Laboratory, which aims to develop and implement new technologies for analysis of brain architecture, connectivity, and brain-wide gene and molecular level organization.

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 lecture and tutorial focuses on measuring human functional brain networks, as well as how to account for inherent variability within those networks. 

This lecture presents an overview of functional brain parcellations, as well as a set of tutorials on bootstrap agregation of stable clusters (BASC) for fMRI brain parcellation.

Neuronify is an educational tool meant to create intuition for how neurons and neural networks behave. You can use it to combine neurons with different connections, just like the ones we have in our brain, and explore how changes on single cells lead to behavioral changes in important networks. Neuronify is based on an integrate-and-fire model of neurons. This is one of the simplest models of neurons that exist. It focuses on the spike timing of a neuron and ignores the details of the action potential dynamics. These neurons are modeled as simple RC circuits. When the membrane potential is above a certain threshold, a spike is generated and the voltage is reset to its resting potential. This spike then signals other neurons through its synapses.

Neuronify aims to provide a low entry point to simulation-based neuroscience.

This lecture covers the three big questions: What is the universe?, what is life?, and what is consciousness?

This lecture outlines various approaches to studying Mind, Brain, and Behavior. 

This lecture covers the history of behaviorism and the ultimate challenge to behaviorism. 

This lecture covers various learning theories.

An introduction to data management, manipulation, visualization, and analysis for neuroscience. Students will learn scientific programming in Python, and use this to work with example data from areas such as cognitive-behavioral research, single-cell recording, EEG, and structural and functional MRI. Basic signal processing techniques including filtering are covered. The course includes a Jupyter Notebook and video tutorials.

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

In this session the Medical Informatics Platform (MIP) federated analytics is presented. The current and future analytical tools implemented in the MIP will be detailed along with the constructs, tools, processes, and restrictions that formulate the solution provided. MIP is a platform providing advanced federated analytics for diagnosis and research in clinical neuroscience research. It is targeting clinicians, clinical scientists and clinical data scientists. It is designed to help adopt advanced analytics, explore harmonized medical data of neuroimaging, neurophysiological and medical records as well as research cohort datasets, without transferring original clinical data. It can be perceived as a virtual database that seamlessly presents aggregated data from distributed sources, provides access and analyze imaging and clinical data, securely stored in hospitals, research archives and public databases. It leverages and re-uses decentralized patient data and research cohort datasets, without transferring original data. Integrated statistical analysis tools and machine learning algorithms are exposed over harmonized, federated medical data.

The Medical Informatics Platform (MIP) is a platform providing federated analytics for diagnosis and research in clinical neuroscience research. The federated analytics is possible thanks to a distributed engine that executes computations and transfers information between the members of the federation (hospital nodes). In this talk the speaker will describe the process of designing and implementing new analytical tools, i.e. statistical and machine learning algorithms.  Mr. Sakellariou will further describe the environment in which these federated algorithms run, the challenges and the available tools, the principles that guide its design and the followed general methodology for each new algorithm. One of the most important challenges which are faced is to design these tools in a way that does not compromise the privacy of the clinical data involved. The speaker will show how to address the main questions when designing such algorithms: how to decompose and distribute the computations and what kind of information to exchange between nodes, in order to comply with the privacy constraint mentioned above. Finally, also the subject of validating these federated algorithms will be briefly touched.

The Medical Informatics Platform (MIP) Dementia had been installed in several memory clinics across Europe allowing them to federate their real-world databases. Research open access databases had also been integrated such as ADNI (Alzheimer’s Dementia Neuroimaging Initiative), reaching a cumulative case load of more than 5,000 patients (major cognitive disorder due to Alzheimer’s disease, other major cognitive disorder, minor cognitive disorder, controls). The statistic and machine learning tools implemented in the MIP allowed researchers to conduct easily federated analyses among Italian memory clinics (Redolfi et al. 2020) and also across borders between the French (Lille), the Swiss (Lausanne) and the Italian (Brescia) datasets.