Lecture + Tutorial, Summer 2009 Computational Neuroscience: Acquisition and Analysis of Neural Data Richard Kempter, Benjamin Blankertz

Lecture: Dr. Richard Kempter, Dr. Benjamin Blankertz
Tutorial on spike trains: Paula Kuokkanen
Tutorial on EEG data: Dr. Benjamin Blankertz

Date: From 17-April-2009 to 17-July-2009.

Location: Lectures and tutorials take place at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neurosciences Berlin, Haus 6, Philippstr. 13.

Times:
Lectures (2 SWS, 2 ECTS): Fridays from 10:00 to 11:30 am in the lecture hall 102
Tutorials (2 SWS, 5 ECTS): Fridays from 12:30 to 14:00 pm in rooms 115 and/or 215

Target Group: Students of Computational Neuroscience, Medical Neuroscience, Biology, Biophysics, Physics, Mathematics, and Computer Science.

Requirements: Basic knowledge in Neurobiology and Mathematics at the level of the first year of the Masters Program in Computational Neuroscience.

Topics: This part of the module ''Acquisition and Analysis of Neural Data'' of the Master Program in Computational Neuroscience provides knowledge on statistical analyses of neural data:

(1) Analysis of spike trains (spike statistics, neural coding, theory of point processes, linear systems theory, correlation analysis, spike-triggered average, reverse correlation, STRF, neural decoding, signal detection theory, infomation theory, signal-to-noise ratio analysis). Please click here for details on the first part of the tutorial.

(2) Statistical analysis of electroencephalogram (EEG) data, e.g., forward calculation; investigation of event-related potentials (ERPs) and event-related desynchronization (ERD); spatial filters; classification. Please click here for details on the second part.

Course Certificates: To obtain course certificates, at least 75% of the lectures (2 ECTS) must be attended, and at least 75% of the points in the exercises (5 ECTS) must be obtained.

To obtain the full 5 ECTS for the tutorial, every individual Master student of the Computational Neuroscience program has to complete an additional small programming project.

Project topics will be distributed at the end of the lecture series, and every student should work on her/his topic in the lecture-free time (July/August/September 2009). Written reports should be turned in via E-mail in September 2009 for evaluation.

Reports must be turned in at least 14 days before the registration to the oral exam on the module "Acquisition and Analysis of Neuronal Data", which will take place around mid October. A positively evaluated report is a prerequisite for registration to the oral exam! Please consider that corrections might become necessary, and the corrected report needs to be evaluated again before the registration to the oral exam.

Students are required to turn in a short written report, that is, a self-contained description of results. The report should comprise a single PDF file including a short Introduction, a Results/Discussion section, labeled Figures with caption, and the program code as an attachment. Guidelines for Writing a Scientific Report might be helpful.

Background material for the analysis of spike trains:
P. Dayan and L.F. Abbott (2001) Theoretical Neuroscience. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.