The Virtual Brain

This fall and winter, we are offering a virtual course: The Virtual Brain in Clinical Research: An Introduction. The course introduces the open-source neuroinformatics platform The Virtual Brain and supporting tools such as the Charité/BIH Virtual Research Environment, workflows and build interfaces to related tools via APIs, to address medical problems.

Dates: October 5th, 2021 to February 1st, 2022
Every Tuesday from 6.00pm to 7.30pm

Registration: The course is free but online registration is required here. Registration remains open throughout the duration of the course.

BCCN Website: Elective course description for BCCN students here
Charité Website: PhD course description for Charité students here

Language: English

Training type: Webinar

Credits: 2 ECTS for Master students at the Bernstein Center Computational Neuroscience Berlin (BCCN) and 3 ECTS for PhD students at the Charité (Promotionsumgebung)

Location: Online

Responsible Person: Prof. Dr. Petra Ritter

Organizers: Dr. Leon Stefanovski, Dr. Konstantin Bülau, Leon Martin, Prof. Dr. Petra Ritter

Affiliation: Charité

Office: Robert-Koch Platz 4, Charité Campus Mitte

Content

This module provides basic knowledge on personalized brain network modeling for state-of-the-art clinical research. Required interdisciplinary methods will be introduced. A focus will be set on the open-source simulation platform The Virtual Brain.

• Theoretical background of large-scale brain network modeling

• Personalization pipelines: Processing of brain images for individualization of brain network modeling

• Concepts of nonlinear dynamics

• Running workflows on high-performance computers

• Parameter optimization and model inference

• Application of brain network modeling for clinical questions

• Introduction to the medical condition targeted through brain simulation: dementias, psychosis and epilepsy
  

• Visualizations of multimodal brain dynamics, ontologies, machine learning, graph theory

• Making use of digital Research Infrastructures used for data integration and simulation in compliance with the EU general Data Protection Regulations (GDPR)

Description of Teaching and Learning Methods

The lecture part consists of weekly virtual teaching using the free tool GoToMeeting. In addition to the presentation of theoretical concepts, it comprises several demonstrations of how to operate workflows, simulation engines, high performance computers and collaborative platforms. Participants are expected to rehearse content after class, using their class notes, digital jupyter notebooks, video tutorials and recommended literature.

Requirements for Participation

• Good english language skills

• Basic programming expertise
  

Videos of the Course Are Online Now

Watch the replay of the course on our YouTube Channel.

Find out More

Complete description of the virtual course can be found in the following information sheet at the top of the left hand column on this page.