Core curriculum: How to learn from videos
Make coffee, fire up YouTube, click, watch, go about your day. Not so fast! To actually learn the material you'll see, you will need a minimum of the lecture itself, some sort of reading around the...
View ArticleCore corriculum: Mathematics I - Linear algebra
What is linear algebra? To get us going, I'm going to use the excellent lecture series by 3Blue1Brown and do my best to add some MRI-related questions after each video. Hopefully the connections won't...
View ArticleCore curriculum: Mathematics II - Linear algebra (cont.)
Continuing the series on linear algebra using the lectures from 3Blue1Brown, we are getting into some of the operations that will become mainstays of fMRI processing later on. It's entirely possible to...
View ArticleCore curriculum - Mathematics: Linear algebra III
Now we start to think about transformations between dimensions, e.g. taking a 2D vector into a 3D space. Non-square matrices come up frequently in engineering and research applications, including fMRI...
View ArticleCore curriculum - Mathematics: Linear algebra IV
Before getting back to the lectures from 3Blue1Brown, try this part review, part preview:Now let's get back into the meaning with a little more detail. A9. The dot (or scalar) product The dot product...
View ArticleCore curriculum - Mathematics: Linear algebra V
With some understanding of basic matrix manipulations, we're ready to begin using matrices to solve systems of linear equations. In this post, you'll learn a few standard tools for solving small...
View ArticleCore curriculum - Mathematics: Linear algebra VI
A13. Eigenvectors and EigenvaluesLet's end this section on linear algebra with a brief exploration of eigenvectors and their eigenvalues. An eigenvector is simply one which is unchanged by a linear...
View ArticleCoffee Break with practiCal fMRI
A new podcast on YouTubeWe all know the best science at a conference happens either during the coffee breaks or in the pub afterwards. This being the case, practiCal fMRI and a guest sit down for...
View ArticleCore curriculum - Cell biology: taxonomy
Most of the biology we need to learn can be treated orthogonal to the mathematics, whereas the mathematics underlies all the physics and engineering to come. As a change of pace, then, I'm going to...
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Can we separate real and apparent motion in QC of fMRI data?
A few years ago, Jo Etzel and I got into a brief but useful investigation of the effects of apparent head motion in fMRI data collected with SMS-EPI. The shorter TR (and smaller voxels) afforded by...
View ArticleCore curriculum - Cell biology: cell membranes and the resting potential
A lot of the important functions of neurons (and glia) happen at their cell membranes. In the case of neurons, in addition to the membrane around the cell body (the soma), we also need to understand...
View ArticleCore curriculum - Cell biology: the neuron's action potential
The last post reviewed the origins and properties of the resting membrane potential. Specifically, we are most interested in the membrane potential of neurons because they have an activated state that...
View ArticleCore curriculum - Cell biology: synapses and neurotransmitters
The action potential from one neuron may or may not trigger further action potentials in neurons it connects to via synapses. A typical neuron with its single axon may make thousands of synapses to...
View ArticleFunctional connectivity, ha ha ha.
If you do resting-state fMRI and you do any sort of functional connectivity analysis, you should probably read this new paper from Blaise...
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