Practical Training: fMRI

Full course description

The primary goal of this course is to provide hands-on experience in experimental design, acquisition and analysis of fMRI experiments. In the first tutorial, each student group will separately formulate an experimental question/hypothesis to be tested with fMRI and will select an appropriate experimental design. In a subsequent meeting, each group will give an oral presentation to the other groups.  The proposal will comprise of an fMRI study. All studies are to be discussed and evaluated; at the end of the meeting one study is selected.

In the group meetings and independent study, all students are involved in implementing the experimental set-up required for performing the selected study (e.g. selection and preparation of stimuli, implementation of the design) and participating in the fMRI measurements. During the latter course meetings, all students must perform the statistical analysis of the datasets. Assistance and prior preparation, especially in the implementation stage (stimulus programming) and data analysis stage (preparation of data in usable format for analysis in Brain Voyager QX), is provided by the tutors. Finally, students describe and discuss their findings in an individually written report.