Introducing the community to the most cutting-edge methods of data acquisition and analysis through direct training

Questions about past or future workshops?  Contact the Office of Neuroscience Research.

Optical Mapping of Human Brain Function using NeuroDOT: A Hands-on workshop

Date: July 13 – 14, 2023
Time: 10:00 am – 2:00 pm
Locations
July 13: Farrell LTC 301* *NOTE location
July 14: NIL Large Conference Room
Questions? Contact Tessa George (WashU Radiology)

Registration is limited and required for participation.

This workshop will use a combination of instructor lecturing and hands-on exercises to introduce diffuse optical methods for mapping brain function in humans using the NeuroDOT toolbox. A central goal of this workshop is to inform the local community about the local data processing resources for optical data. Use of functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and high-density diffuse optical tomography (HD-DOT) technology has been growing exponentially. These diffuse optical methods for human brain mapping provide a safe, silent, and inexpensive surrogate for fMRI to map cortical brain function. These methods are being used for studies on children in naturalistic settings and in patients/participants contraindicated for fMRI, such as those with deep brain stimulators, cochlear implants, or pacemakers. The workshop will review the basic physics and biology of the approach, step through how the software works, and train attendees how to use the software through user exercises.

Learning Outcomes: This course will enable you to…

  • Describe the fundamental principles behind diffuse light propagation in biological tissue
  • Evaluate inversion parameters with respect to image smoothness and resolution
  • Estimate optically-measured brain responses to varying stimulus paradigms with real data

Intended Audience: This material is intended for scientists, engineers, faculty, postdocs, students, and technicians interested in basic research and medical applications of optical imaging of human brain function and/or in learning more about NeuroDOT. Any lab currently collecting or collaborating on fNIRS/HD-DOT may be interested, as well as labs interested in investigating such tools for their own research.

Requirements: To participate in the hands-on exercises, attendees will need a laptop with Matlab installed, or access to a server from the laptop.

VIRTUAL Application of Machine Learning Tools to OMICs in Neuroscience

FacilitatorsLaura Ibañez and Victoria Fernandez (WashU Psychiatry)

February 2021. Basic introductory sessions to Machine Learning, two plenary lectures, oral presentations and round table. Supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Office of Neuroscience Research, the Neurogenomics and Informatics Center, the McDonnell Genome Institute, the Department of Genetics and the WashU Postdoc Society (WUPS).

Open Source Workshops

Facilitators: Meaghan Creed (WashU Psychiatry), Lex Kravitz (WashU Psychiatry), Martha Bagnall (WashU Dept of Neuroscience)

Supported by the Washington University Pain Center, the McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience, and the Office of Neuroscience Research.

VIRTUAL SimBA: July 2020

Facilitators: Sam Golden and Simon Nilsson (University of Washington)

An open source toolkit for computer classification of complex social behaviors in experimental animals

VIRTUAL B-SOiD: April 2020; follow-up session May 2020

Facilitators: Alexander Hsu and Eric Yttri (Carnegie Mellon U)

An open source unsupervised algorithm for discovery of spontaneous behaviors

Arduino: Feb 2020

Facilitator: Lex Kravitz (WashU Psychiatry)

Affordable open-source electronics platform with easy-to-use hardware and software

BonsaiOct 2019

Facilitator: Meaghan Creed (WashU Anesthesiology)

Visual language for software systems that require rich and rapid interaction with the external world

DeepLabCut™: July 2019

Facilitator: Martha Bagnall (WashU Dept of Neuroscience)

For 3D markerless pose estimation based on transfer learning with deep neural networks