Fall School 2023: The Virtual Brain in Clinical Research

This 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.

When: From Sept 5th, 2023 to November 21st, 2023 - every Tuesday from 4.30pm to 6.30pm (CEST)

The course is FREE but online registration is required here (registration remains open throughout the duration of the course.)

• 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, Charité

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

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