SPM SPM8 Sydney Australia functional MRI course

SPM8 for Basic and Clinical Investigators is an intermediate-level, 5-day workshop designed for investigators having familiarity with the fundamental principles of fMRI, with at least six months experience in functional neuroimaging data acquisition and analysis.

The workshop will focus on using SPM8 and its extensions for preprocessing, statistical modeling and visualization of data associated with a range of basic and clinical fMRI experimental designs. While the primary emphasis will involve using the core SPM8 programs for these purposes, there will also be extensive discussion of a variety of software tools that extend the power of SPM8. Some of these tools facilitate fMRI quality assurance through artifact detection and mitigation at various analysis stages. Other tools support a variety of data visualization methods, including MRIcron, xjView, FSLview and FreeSurfer.

As the presentations will include demonstrations and tutorials utilizing SPM8, participants are expected to bring a laptop with MATLAB, SPM8 and MRIcron already installed. Detailed setup instructions can be found here.

Each afternoon will end with a laboratory session, in which participants will gather in small groups to work through the stages of analyzing data from example fMRI experiments.

In addition, the website will provide guidance for subsequent self-study.

The course is hosted by the Macquarie University ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders (CCD) in affiliation with the Australasian Cognitive Neurosciences Conference (ACNC) 2011.

It will be held at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia from NOV 28 - DEC 2, 2011. Directions to campus can be found here. The conference room will be in Robert Menzies College (also used & known as 'Trinity Chapel'), at Robert Menzies College, 136 Herring Road, Macquarie University.

The Australasian Cognitive Neurosciences Conference 2011 will take place at Macquarie University the week after the SPM course.

The fee for the 5-day program is US$1500. Reduced rates of US$1250 for post-doctoral fellows and US$1000 for undergraduate, graduate or medical students are available. A 20% discount is available to all Macquarie University investigators.

Register for the program here.

You can arrange payment using PAYPAL here.

Accommodations for course participants are available at the Travelodge in Sydney. Course participants wishing to stay at the hotel can make reservations by contacting the hotel with their name, arrival and departure times. For people wishing to stay downtown, there is a train station on campus. Additional accomodations information can be found here.

Questions about the course arrangements or content should be directed to spmbasics@neurometrika.org

The course instructor will be Thomas Zeffiro.

Educational Objectives

Understand the basic organization of the SPM GUI
Understand the organization of the SPM "toolbox"
Be able to construct batch processing scripts for preprocessing and statistical modeling
Understand the basic fMRI data preprocessing steps
Be able to construct a preprocessing sequence including slice time correction, realignment, and spatial filtering
Understand the origins of the artifacts most commonly encountered in fMRI datasets
Be able to explore an fMRI dataset for artifacts and effect repairs as needed
Understand the basic fMRI single subject experimental design types
Be able to implement statistical analysis procedures for the basic single subject fMRI designs
Understand the basic fMRI single group experimental design types
Be able to implement statistical analysis procedures for the basic single group fMRI designs
Understand the basic fMRI multiple group experimental design types
Be able to implement statistical analysis procedures for the basic multiple group fMRI designs
Understand the process of incorporation of covariates in fMRI experimental designs
Be able to construct and estimate statistical models involving covariates
Be able to utilize the RIC Talairach Daemon for region labeling
Be able to utilize the SPM Anatomy toolbox for region labeling
Be able to use MRIcron for visualization, including volume rendering
Be able to use xjView for visualization and labeling
Understand the basic principles and procedures associated with ROI analysis