Details of PCP4002: Functional magnetic resonance imaging

Overall Aims and Purpose

The class is intended for Masters students in Psychological research and PhD students who want to gain an in-depth knowledge of brain-imaging methods. Given the new acquisition of an MRI facility at the School of Psychology at Bangor, the class is also intended for internal staff development and external individuals how wish to learn about functional brain imaging.

Teaching and Learning Strategy

The class consists of one 2-hr class per week, which is held as a lecture or in a tutorial fashion (depending on topic). An important element of the class is a weekly homework assignment, in which learned concepts have to be applied to real data sets. The class ends with a project in which the students design, conduct and/or analyze an own brain imaging experiment.

Learning Outcomes

After taking the class the student should be able to ...

1. Know the fundamentals of functional imaging research and evaluate functional imaging research critically.
2. Design a good fMRI study.
3. Be able to do simple data analysis using Matlab, a skill that is highly transferable to other research areas (behavioral experiments, EEG, etc).
4. Teach themselves very quickly a specific analysis packages for fMRI data and analyse an fMRI experiment.

Course Content

The class covers the fundamentals of functional magnetic resonance imaging: Physical and physiological background, pre-processing, linear models, statistical testing, experimental design, atlas spaces, and correction for multiple testing. The class is designed allow students to design and analyze their own fMRI study. The focus is not to learn a particular software package, but to develop an in-depth understanding of the issues and challenges regarding brain imaging data. Basic analysis and programming skills in Matlab will be taught as part of the class.

Optional in

MSC/PRCLNEU Psychological Research (CLN), year 1

MSC/PRCN Psychological Research (CN), year 1