This course is an investigation of affective priming and creation of rigorously counterbalanced, fully computerized testing paradigm. Includes background readings, study design, counterbalancing, study execution, data analysis, presentation of poster, and final paper.

This course is designed to provide an understanding of how the human brain works in health and disease, and is intended for both the Brain and Cognitive Sciences major and the non-Brain and Cognitive Sciences major. Knowledge of how the human brain works is important for all citizens, and the lessons to be learned have enormous implications for public policy makers and educators.
The course will cover the regional anatomy of the brain and provide an introduction to the cellular function of neurons, synapses and neurotransmitters. Commonly used drugs that alter brain function can be understood through a knowledge of neurotransmitters. Along similar lines, common diseases that illustrate normal brain function will be discussed. Experimental animal studies that reveal how the brain works will be reviewed.
Throughout the seminar we will discuss clinical cases from Dr. Byrne’s experience that illustrate brain function; in addition, articles from the scientific literature will be discussed in each class.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"When someone loses consciousness, one of the main things that happens is a loss of integrated activity across functionally separate brain networks. But there isn’t a single way of measuring this that tracks with the degree of consciousness. That could soon change given the findings of a new article in the journal Anesthesiology. A group of international researchers examined functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, data and found support for the use of something called the “global brain signal”. The global signal is an average of all gray-matter brain activity across each voxel in a scan, and reflects global coordination at a given time. When there’s high coordination, voxels will all be mostly positive -- or negative -- and the sum will be positive or negative. In contrast, if there’s less coordination, the voxels across the brain won’t match and the values will cancel out..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This team-taught multidisciplinary course provides information relevant to the conduct and interpretation of human brain mapping studies. It begins with in-depth coverage of the physics of image formation, mechanisms of image contrast, and the physiological basis for image signals. Parenchymal and cerebrovascular neuroanatomy and application of sophisticated structural analysis algorithms for segmentation and registration of functional data are discussed. Additional topics include: fMRI experimental design including block design, event related and exploratory data analysis methods, and building and applying statistical models for fMRI data; and human subject issues including informed consent, institutional review board requirements and safety in the high field environment.

Additional Faculty
Div Bolar
Dr. Bradford Dickerson
Dr. John Gabrieli
Dr. Doug Greve
Dr. Karl Helmer
Dr. Dara Manoach
Dr. Jason Mitchell
Dr. Christopher Moore
Dr. Vitaly Napadow
Dr. Jon Polimeni
Dr. Sonia Pujol
Dr. Bruce Rosen
Dr. Mert Sabuncu
Dr. David Salat
Dr. Robert Savoy
Dr. David Somers
Dr. A. Gregory Sorensen
Dr. Christina Triantafyllou
Dr. Wim Vanduffel
Dr. Mark Vangel
Dr. Lawrence Wald
Dr. Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli
Dr. Anastasia Yendiki

Surveys the literature on the cognitive and neural organization of human memory and learning. Includes consideration of working memory and executive control, episodic and semantic memory, and implicit forms of memory. Emphasizes integration of cognitive theory with recent insights from functional neuroimaging (e.g., fMRI and PET).

This course is an investigation to distinguish episodic memory, which is memory of personal events, from semantic memory, which is general knowledge independent of time and place.

This course is an introduction to basic NMR theory. Examples of biochemical data obtained using NMR are summarized along with other related experiments. Students participate in detailed study of NMR imaging techniques, including discussions of basic cross-sectional image reconstruction, image contrast, flow and real-time imaging, and hardware design considerations. Exposure to laboratory NMR spectroscopic and imaging equipment is included.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Scientists have uncovered new information on how sensory processing can change in multiple sclerosis, or MS. Their findings could open novel avenues for understanding and treating the disease. People with MS typically experience deficits in their ability to smell and taste, abnormal temperature processing, and heightened sensations of pain or fatigue. But there’s no clear neurocognitive mechanism to explain such diverse symptoms. A new report in the journal Human Brain Mapping suggests these changes may stem from a problem with interoception. Interoception is a lesser-known skill that helps people feel signals originating from inside of the body – such as the heart beating or the digestive system signaling hunger. Many of the sensory processing issues that characterize MS are associated with brain pathways related to interoception. This link prompted researchers to examine how these pathways are affected in the context of the disease..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Understanding the brain’s remarkable ability for visual object recognition is one of the greatest challenges of brain research. The goal of this course is to provide an overview of key issues of object representation and to survey data from primate physiology and human fMRI that bear on those issues. Topics include the computational problems of object representation, the nature of object representations in the brain, the tolerance and selectivity of those representations, and the effects of attention and learning.

This course explores the social relevance of neuroscience, considering how emerging areas of brain research at once reflect and reshape social attitudes and agendas. Topics include brain imaging and popular media; neuroscience of empathy, trust, and moral reasoning; new fields of neuroeconomics and neuromarketing; ethical implications of neurotechnologies such as cognitive enhancement pharmaceuticals; neuroscience in the courtroom; and neuroscientific recasting of social problems such as addiction and violence. Guest lectures by neuroscientists, class discussion, and weekly readings in neuroscience, popular media, and science studies.

How likely are published findings in the functional neuroimaging literature to be false? According to a recent mathematical model, the potential for false positives increases with the flexibility of analysis methods. Functional MRI (fMRI) experiments can be analyzed using a large number of commonly used tools, with little consensus on how, when, or whether to apply each one. This situation may lead to substantial variability in analysis outcomes. Thus, the present study sought to estimate the flexibility of neuroimaging analysis by submitting a single event-related fMRI experiment to a large number of unique analysis procedures. Ten analysis steps for which multiple strategies appear in the literature were identified, and two to four strategies were enumerated for each step. Considering all possible combinations of these strategies yielded 6,912 unique analysis pipelines. Activation maps from each pipeline were corrected for multiple comparisons using five thresholding approaches, yielding 34,560 significance maps. While some outcomes were relatively consistent across pipelines, others showed substantial methods-related variability in activation strength, location, and extent. Some analysis decisions contributed to this variability more than others, and different decisions were associated with distinct patterns of variability across the brain. Qualitative outcomes also varied with analysis parameters: many contrasts yielded significant activation under some pipelines but not others. Altogether, these results reveal considerable flexibility in the analysis of fMRI experiments. This observation, when combined with mathematical simulations linking analytic flexibility with elevated false positive rates, suggests that false positive results may be more prevalent than expected in the literature. This risk of inflated false positive rates may be mitigated by constraining the flexibility of analytic choices or by abstaining from selective analysis reporting.

Psychology is designed to meet scope and sequence requirements for the single-semester introduction to psychology course. The book offers a comprehensive treatment of core concepts, grounded in both classic studies and current and emerging research. The text also includes coverage of the DSM-5 in examinations of psychological disorders. Psychology incorporates discussions that reflect the diversity within the discipline, as well as the diversity of cultures and communities across the globe.Senior Contributing AuthorsRose M. Spielman, Formerly of Quinnipiac UniversityContributing AuthorsKathryn Dumper, Bainbridge State CollegeWilliam Jenkins, Mercer UniversityArlene Lacombe, Saint Joseph's UniversityMarilyn Lovett, Livingstone CollegeMarion Perlmutter, University of Michigan

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Explain the functions of the spinal cordIdentify the hemispheres and lobes of the brainDescribe the types of techniques available to clinicians and researchers to image or scan the brain

Memory is not a unitary faculty, but rather consists of multiple forms of learning that differ in their operating characteristics and neurobiological substrates. This seminar will consider current debates regarding the cognitive and neural architectures of memory, specifically focusing on recent efforts to address these controversies through application of functional neuroimaging (primarily fMRI and PET).

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Accumulating evidence suggests that psilocybin – the primary psychedelic compound found in so-called magic mushrooms – can be used to safely treat a range of psychiatric conditions. Prior studies have shown that just one or two doses of psilocybin can have a rapid and lasting positive impact on mental health, but the associated brain mechanisms aren’t well understood. Now, researchers based in the United Kingdom have used functional magnetic resonance imaging to map the brain activity of nineteen patients with treatment-resistant major depression who were given psilocybin. The results shed light on how the compound changes human brain function. The patients were dosed with the drug as part of an open-label clinical trial. Before and one day after treatment, the researchers used fMRI to look at cerebral blood flow and brain functional connectivity – a measure of how different regions of the brain interact..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.