Class Central is learner-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

The Multi-scale brain

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne via edX

Overview

Understanding the brain requires an integrated understanding of different scales of organisation of the brain. This means studying the role that genes, channels, cells, microcircuits, and even whole brain regions have in different types of behaviour: From perception to action, while asleep or when being awake.

This coursewill take the you through the latest data, models and techniques for investigating the different levels of the brain. We will show how we can put the pieces together and attain new insights and derive new theories. With contributions from more than 10 international neuroscientists from six different research institutions, the MOOC gives a broad overview of the latest tools and techniques for neuroinformatics, analysis, modelling and simulation.
At the same time, several different tutorials on available data and data tools, such as those from the Allen Institute for Brain Science, provide you with in-depth knowledge on brain atlases, gene expression data and modeling neurons. These tutorials will be followed by exercises that give you the opportunity to acquire the necessary skills to use the tools and data for your own research.

Syllabus

1. Introduction

1.1. Introduction to the course, Sean Hill
1.2. Introduction to the Allen Institute for Brain Science data and tools, Terri Gilbert
1.3. Human Brain Atlasing, Danilo Bzdok
1.4. Graded quiz 1

2. Genetic Mapping of the mouse brain

2.1. Using whole-brain and single-cell gene expression to identify and characterize cell types, Vilas Menon
2.2. Genetic dissection of neural circuits, Trygve Bakken

3. Navigating gene expression data.

3.1. Accessing mouse gene expression data, Terri Gilbert
3.2. Navigating the human gene expression data, Terri Gilbert
3.3. Peer-graded assignment gene expression data

4. Multi-scale connectivity

4.1. Synaptic Mapping with Array Tomography, Forrest Collman
4.2. Mesoscale mapping, Jack Waters
4.3. The connectivity atlas, Terri Gilbert
4.4. Graded assignment mouse connectivity

5. Multi-scale modeling

5.1. Blue Brain, Sean Hill
5.2. Cell types and modeling, Werner von Geit & Elisabetta Iavarone
5.3. Graded assignment modeling
5.4. Building bio-physiologically constrained models of large-scale phenomena in the brain, Alain Destexhe
5.5. Graded quiz 2

6. Reconstructing micro-circuitry

6.1. Computational properties of human cortical microcircuits Huib Mansvelder
6.2. Modelling microcircuits, Michael Reimann
6.3. Graded quiz 3

7. Structure and function of the whole brain

7.1. Whole brain morpho-functional imaging: connecting a single neuron to whole brain, Francesco Pavone
7.2. Functional physiology of the mouse virtual cortex, Saskia de Vries
7.3. Brain observatory data sets, Terri Gilbert
7.4. Peer-graded homework
7.5. Graded quiz 4

8. Final exam

Taught by

Sean Hill, Terri Gilhou, Forrest Collman, Trygve Bakken, Saskia de Vries, Jack Waters, Huib Mansvelder, Vilas Menon, Alain Destexhe, Francesco Pavone, Danilo Bzdok and Michael Reimann

Reviews

Start your review of The Multi-scale brain

Never Stop Learning.

Get personalized course recommendations, track subjects and courses with reminders, and more.

Someone learning on their laptop while sitting on the floor.