The purpose of the workshop is to provide a serious introduction to this field. It is primarily intended for people new to the field, and for those who have had some experience but seek a more thorough and principled introduction.
CURRICULUM
Students will receive a firm grounding in the fundamentals of fMRI. This will include the basic physics of MR imaging, the biology and biophysics of the hemodynamic responses to neural activity, the principles of fMRI data analysis (including both exploratory and statistical analysis), stimulus presentation and response recording in the context of high magnetic fields and electromagnetic pulses, and the design of perceptual and cognitive experiments. Additional topics will include resting-state fMRI and DTI/DSI/Tractography to address issues of structural and functional connectivity in the human brain, but the core curriculum remains task-activation studies using fMRI.
A special emphasis of the course will be the design, implementation, and execution of perceptual and/or cognitive experiments by the participants. Participants will break into small groups to design their own fMRI experiments. Barring unforeseen problems, some of these experiments will be executed, and the resulting data analyzed, on the final day of the course.
The core faculty is drawn from the staff of the Athinoula A. Martinos Center (of the Massachusetts General Hospital and Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and affiliated faculty from Harvard University, Boston University, McLean Hospital and other institutions.
NOTE: While a large fraction of the workshop is spent addressing the many issues associated with the analysis of fMRI data, this is NOT a course to teach a specific software package. Other workshops, devoted to specific packages, are available at Martinos and at other institutions.
Send e-mail questions to fmrivfp@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu. Please include course code (e.g., 2014Sep29) in SUBJECT line. For more details, see: http://www.martinos.org/fMRIVFP
