PEN702 Contemporary Methods in Cognitive Neuroscience
COURSE OVERVIEW
Modern neuroimaging provides researchers with powerful tools for investigating the human brain that heretofore have been unanswerable. Previously, scientists were limited to only post-mortem studies of patients with traumatic brain injury. Now, scientists can ask profound questions about many aspects of cognition, such as language processing, emotion, memory, etc. Beginning with the classic electroencephalograph methodology, a slew of neuroimaging methods have become available, each with its own set of assumptions and capabilities that must be understood to appropriately use them and generate new contributions to educational neuroscience.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Students will learn about neuroimaging technologies and the principles of measurement on which each neuroimaging technology operates. They will learn the relationship between the different types of neuroimaging systems and the range of questions they can and cannot answer. Understanding this relationship is vital to interpreting claims that appear in research articles, and students can expect to leave the course with critical analysis skills on which to evaluate neuroimaging claims and their relevance to children’s learning and education, which is critical knowledge to the discipline of Educational Neuroscience. This course will provide students with hands-on experiences, such as brain dissections, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) equipment, EEG equipment, and other methodologies covered. Students will learn about neuroimaging experimental design (block vs event), neuroimaging data analysis, and the ethical protocol of using neuroimaging systems (participant interactions).
Prerequisite
Enrolled in PhD in Educational Neuroscience Program; or permission from Instructor
Distribution
Doctorate, Graduate, In-person