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.

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

This lecture provides an introduction to the study of eye-tracking in humans. 

From the retina to the superior colliculus, the lateral geniculate nucleus into primary visual cortex and beyond, this lecture gives a tour of the mammalian visual system highlighting the Nobel-prize winning discoveries of Hubel & Wiesel.

From Universal Turing Machines to McCulloch-Pitts and Hopfield associative memory networks, this lecture explains what is meant by computation.

In an overview of the structure of the mammalian neocortex, this lecture explains how the mammalian cortex is organized in a hierarchy, describing the columnar principle and canonical microcircuits.

The retina has 60 different types of neurons. What are their functions? This lecture explores the definition of cell types and their functions in the mammalian retina.

Optical imaging offers a look inside the working brain. This lecture takes a look at orientation and ocular dominance columns in the visual cortex, and shows how they can be viewed with calcium imaging.

Functional imaging has led to the discovery of a plethora of visual cortical regions. This lecture introduces functional imaging techniques and their teachings about the visual cortex.

This lecture explains these ideas and explores the task of characterizing neuronal response properties using information theory.