COGNITIVE NEUROIMAGING Canale unico
Docente coordinatore e verbalizzante: GASPARE GALATI
Docenti
Obiettivi formativi
Students will be provided a solid background on the main techniques used to image the human brain in vivo, and of their application in the cognitive neuroscientific field; a critical view of the validity and the limits of knowledge on the human mind derived by the application of such methods; a set of practical abilities in planning and analyzing cognitive neuroimaging experiments; and a series of conceptual tools to personally and critically evaluate results obtained by research in the field of cognitive neuroimaging.
Knowledge and understanding: Students will understand the historical and conceptual foundations of cognitive neuroscience; will be able to fully appreciate the potentials and the limits of recording brain signals as a tool for understanding the functional architecture of the human mind; will know the basic technical characteristics of the main neuroimaging techniques; will master the main experimental paradigms employed in functional neuroimaging experiments; will understand the statistical foundations of data analysis as applied to neuroimaging data.
Applying knowledge and understanding: Students will become competent in planning and implementing cognitive tasks to be associated with neuroimaging techniques and research protocols for studying neurophysiological mechanisms underlying cognitive functions in clinical and pre-clinical fields and in the interpretation of imaging results, in designing full experiments, including the data analysis strategy, while avoiding common pitfalls and methodological problems.
Making judgements: Students will be able to read and fully understand papers in the cognitive neuroimaging literature and to critically evaluate their methods and conclusions, identifying their potential impact and conceptual and methodological issues.
Communication skills: Students will become competent in writing short project proposals and in presenting their proposals orally in a limited amount of time with the help of slides.
Learning skills: Students will develop instrumental and research skills useful for acquiring further knowledge.
Risultati di apprendimento attesi
Knowledge and understanding: Students will understand the historical and conceptual foundations of cognitive neuroscience; will be able to fully appreciate the potentials and the limits of recording brain signals as a tool for understanding the functional architecture of the human mind; will know the basic technical characteristics of the main neuroimaging techniques; will master the main experimental paradigms employed in functional neuroimaging experiments; will understand the statistical foundations of data analysis as applied to neuroimaging data.
Applying knowledge and understanding: Students will become competent in planning and implementing cognitive tasks to be associated with neuroimaging techniques and research protocols for studying neurophysiological mechanisms underlying cognitive functions in clinical and pre-clinical fields and in the interpretation of imaging results, in designing full experiments, including the data analysis strategy, while avoiding common pitfalls and methodological problems.
Making judgements: Students will be able to read and fully understand papers in the cognitive neuroimaging literature and to critically evaluate their methods and conclusions, identifying their potential impact and conceptual and methodological issues.
Communication skills: Students will become competent in writing short project proposals and in presenting their proposals orally in a limited amount of time with the help of slides.
Learning skills: Students will develop instrumental and research skills useful for acquiring further knowledge.
Prerequisiti
Students should be familiar with the gross neuroanatomy of the cerebral cortex (lobes, gyri, sulci, sensory and motor systems), and with basic neurophysiological concepts (neurons, synapses, circuits). Students should be also familiar with basic parametric statistics (t-test, ANOVA, regression).
Programma dell’insegnamento
The course provides an overview of the application of brain imaging methods to study human cognitive and sensorimotor processes and to identify neural architectures underlying normal and abnormal cognitive functioning. The main foundational and methodological issues, listed below, will be introduced and critically discussed during lectures, together with the presentation of typical findings and applications, with particular emphasis on the field of visual cognition:
1) Introduction: history of cognitive neuroscience and of neuroimaging techniques; basic conceptual foundations of cognitive neuroimaging.
2) Technological and physiological foundations of neuroimaging: cerebral metabolism, blood flow and oxygenation; positron emission tomography; (functional) magnetic resonance imaging; electro- and magneto-encephalography.
3) Experimental design in functional neuroimaging: cognitive subtraction; categorical, parametric, and factorial designs; block and event-related designs.
4) Data analysis in functional neuroimaging: preprocessing; general linear model; statistical inference; voxel- and ROI-based approaches; data-driven approaches.
5) Conceptual issues in neuroimaging: functional specialization vs. integration; relationship with computational models of mind functioning.
6) Structural neuroimaging: morphometry, structural connectivity, lesion-symptom mapping.
7) Advanced fMRI-based methods: adaptation and priming, pattern analysis, decoding, machine learning.
8) Connectomics: resting-state networks, psychophysiological interactions, dynamic causal modelling.
The laboratory activities consist in:
(1) guided practical experience in visualizing, manipulating, and analyzing brain images, using MATLAB and widely used tools such as SPM and MRIcro, including: analysis of sample PET data; complete preprocessing and analyzing of a true single-subject fMRI dataset; analysis of lesional, morphometric and functional connectivity data; writing simple MATLAB scripts to automate processing steps;
(2) preparing a research project in the field of cognitive neuroimaging, to be developed in a group, following specific steps, and to be presented by the end of the class. The instructor will explain the working methods and introduce the topics on which the groups will work. The topics and reference papers are available on the e-learning site of the course.
Testi di riferimento
Russell Poldrack: "The new mind readers"
Tor Wager and Martin Lindquist: "Principles of fMRI"
Further teaching material is available on the course site on the Sapienza e-learning platform, and consists of slides, online resources, and scientific papers which either are publicly accessible or can be downloaded via the Sapienza digital library.
Modalità di svolgimento
Lectures, active discussions, and practical laboratory sessions will be regularly alternated on each day. Lectures will present historical, theoretical, and methodological issues, and discussion of significant papers in the neuroimaging literature. Practical experience with brain images require each student to work on his/her laptop using software tools provided by the instructor.
Frequenza
Attendance is required.
Modalità di esame
The final evaluation will be based on three main scores:
1) an evaluation of the final products presented by the student at the end of the class (quality of the final version of the project, artefacts produced during the laboratory sessions): up to 15/30;
2) an evaluation of the personal contribution of the student during the course (project presentations, discussion of others' projects, participation to laboratory activities): up to 5 bonus points;
3) final exam: up to 15/30. The final exam will consist in an oral interview about the student's project and all the material studied in the textbooks and presented during the lectures, also evaluating the ability to apply learned concepts and methodologies to real research situations.
Esempi di domande
For example, the instructor may ask to: 1) discuss any of the theoretical issues listed in the course programme; 2) build a working experimental paradigm on the basis of an experimental hypothesis presented by the instructor; 3) designing a data analysis strategy based on an experiment presented by the instructor; 4) identifying potential theoretical and methodological issues in a neuroimaging experiment presented by the instructor.
Programmazione delle attività didattiche
- Introduction to neuroimaging and to the laboratory activities
- Recap of basic fundamentals of neuroscience
- Cortical neuroanatomy and how to study it
- History of functional neuroimaging
- The advent of PET and the first functional neuroanatomic studies of the human brain
- Hands-on experience: analysis of PET data
- Cognitive subtraction and basic experimental designs for neuroimaging research
- The advent of fMRI and the discovery of the BOLD signal
- Principles of MR physics and the physiology of the BOLD signal
- Classical fMRI studies of the visual and motor systems
- Block and event-related designs in fMRI
- Hands-on experience: preprocessing of fMRI data
- Experimental designs in fMRI
- Event-related fMRI
- Principles of fMRI analysis: modeling of the BOLD response
- Principles of fMRI analysis: the general linear model
- Principles of fMRI analysis: inference at the subject and group level
- Hands-on experience: analysis of fMRI data
- Regions-of-interest approaches
- Neural adaptation paradigms
- Multivariate pattern analysis
- Approaches based on representational similarity
- Structural connectivity
- Functional connectivity and resting-state fMRI
- Resting-state networks
- Functional parcellations of the human cortex
- Approaches to the study of effective connectivity
- Presentation of final students' projects
Obiettivi per lo sviluppo sostenibile - Agenda ONU 2030
- Anno accademico2026/2027
- Corso di studio a cui afferisce l’insegnamentoCognitive neuroscience - Neuroscienze cognitive
- Codice insegnamento1045031
- Anno e semestre1º anno - 2º semestre
- TipologiaAttività formative caratterizzanti
- AmbitoPsicologia generale, fisiologica e psicometria
- SSDM-PSI/02
- Presenza obbligatoriaNo
- LinguaENG
- CFU9 CFU
- Durata complessiva84 ore
- Distribuzione delle ore48 classroom hours, 36 laboratory hours