Course on Functional Neuroimaging: A Hands-On Approach (Brazil)

Dates: January - 16th to January – 19th 2018
Venue: PUCRS/InsCer, Porto Alegre, Brazil

For Information Contact:
Dr. Alexandre R. Franco – alexandre.franco@pucrs.br
Dr. Augusto Buchweitz – augusto.buchweitz@pucrs.br


Objectives:
During the course, an introduction to the fundamentals of functional brain imaging clinical and research applications, and a hands-on study of the development of functional neuroimaging investigations will be provided. The course focuses on state-of-the-art imaging techniques of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Lectures lay the groundwork for understanding the hardware and the bases of signal acquisition; address task design to elicit the cognitive processes of interest, preprocessing and statistical analysis of the data; and introduce advanced computation techniques for understanding the underlying cortical dynamics of clinical and typically-developing populations. Students will have a hands-on experience performing this type of research, where they will perform an fMRI experiment and analyze these data. Within the course, the students will collect their own fMRI data and learn how to process the images.

Course Outline:
Students, professors, and researchers excited and interested about brain functioning and imaging, including, but not limited to, medical doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, biomedical and computer engineers, computer scientists, mathematicians, basic neuroscientists, physicists, chemists and even philosophers.

Registration Website
[goo.gl]

NOTE: All lectures will be taught in English without translation
For the “Hands On” lectures, students will be provided a desktop computer and neuroimaging software preinstalled..
The practical lectures are limited to 30 students due to computer lab space.

Faculty:
John VanMeter
Adam Green
Alexandre Rosa Franco
Augusto Buchweitz
Alessandro Mazzola

Course Outline
Day 1 (January 16th) – Basics of functional MRI (fMRI) / Designing Paradigms
Module 1 - How brain images are formed from MRI’s
Module 2 - Imaging brain function: Designing tasks, and investigating cognition.
Module 3 - After acquiring the data: What to do with these images? Level one analysis

Day 2 (January 17th) – Hands on: Collecting fMRI data / Preprocessing
Module 4 - Getting some data: Running a MRI scan at the Brain Institute
Module 5 – Tips and Tricks for a successful scan
Module 6 - Getting individual subject activation maps

Day 3 (January 18h) – Hands on: Preprocessing single subject data / Second level analysis / Resting State FMRI
Module 7 - Preprocess imaging data: Searching for brain activation
Module 8- Transforming data into activation maps: What’s behind those pretty pictures?
Module 9 – Studying your brain at rest

Day 4 (January 19th) – Hands on: Quality Control and Second level analysis / Student Talks / Learning Disorders
Module 10 – Quality control: making sure you can use your functional data
Module 11 – Second level analysis: How to perform group statistics
Module 12 – Brain Imaging of Learning Disorders
Module 13 –Student talks