A more detailed program will be shared in the following months.

Each week students will attend two different courses, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, approximately 3 hours per day each. A social dinner will be organized during the week as well.

Preliminary program:

Week 1 (June 30th - July 4th)

Introduction to programming (Giacomo Loreggia)

The course of Introduction to Programming is going to give a theoretical view on fundamental concepts in programming, such as the flow chart, data types, variables, control structures, with examples on Python and Matlab. The goal of the course is to introduce the students to the programming mentality, to allow them to analyse simple code, so that they can read critically AI’s code answers to scripting prompts.

PsychoPy (Rebecca Hirst from Open Science Tools Ltd)

The goal of this course is to teach you to create better psychology and neuroscience experiments in PsychoPy and Python.

We will be teaching you to:

• create experiments with PsychoPy's graphical Builder interface
• use Python to code a study from scratch
• efficiently combine code with Builder experiments, for the optimal combination of ease and flexibility
• how to launch an experiment online via PsychoJS and org
• interact with a range of hardware from your experiment (e.g. EEG, eyetracking)

The sessions are designed for beginners but the sections on coding do move at a fairly high pace to cater for more intermediate-level attendees as well.

Week 2 (July 7-11)

Electroencephalography (EEG) with EEGLAB (Giuseppe Di Dona) & ICA (Marco Congedo)

functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) with NeuroDOT (Adam Eggebrecht)

For the fNIRS NeuroDOT course, we will cover fundamentals for optical brain mapping in humans, including the physics and engineering for how it works, along with detailed, hands-on interactive sessions on data quality assurance, pre-processing, data-anatomy alignment and modeling, post-processing, and data visualization. The goal of the mini-course is to provide a foundation of understanding and familiarity of the tools to explore, play, and empower the user to wield these optical imaging methods to answer novel questions in human neuroscience.

Week 3 (July 14-18)

Pupillometry (Giulia Calignano)

In psychophysiology, the study of pupil diameter variations in response to internal and external stimuli has a long and discontinuous history. However, the utility of pupillometry and cognitive pupillometry remains central, as indicated by the growing number of studies employing it to investigate fundamental cognitive processes such as attentional resource allocation, cognitive effort, language processing, and memory across the lifespan, from early infancy to adulthood.

This course offers an introduction to the use of pupillometry in cognitive sciences, including hands-on exercises for data processing. Specifically, the lessons will be accompanied by the use of Opensesame, a free software for implementing classic experimental designs in cognitive psychology (e.g., digit span, descending tasks, lexical decision, visual and auditory recognition), and R, for processing and visualizing continuous pupil diameter variations over time.

The course will cover:

• The main sources of noise in measurement and interpretation of the pupil signal.
• Recommendations on experimental design and setting characteristics in cognitive pupillometry.
• Degrees of freedom encountered in the data processing and visualization pipeline and the multiverse approach to pupillometry pre-processing.
• The functional and cognitive interpretation of pupillometric measures in light of foundational studies in the field.

The use of these tools will be supported by commented examples to facilitate software accessibility for all participants. However, a basic knowledge of R is recommended. All course materials will be shared and made accessible through the OSF platform.

Labvanced: Online Eye-Tracking (Caspar Goeke  from Scicovery GmbH)

During the summer course, Caspar Goeke, the developer of Labvanced, will teach the attendees in detail about online / webcam based Eye-Tracking. This will include the following aspects:

• History, background & motivation for webcam based eye-tracking, as well as an overview of the current landscape / offerings in the field
• Overview of techniques, methodologies, and challenges (Logistic Regression, RBF, SVMs, Neural Networks, Simulations)
• Webcam based eye-tracking and data privacy (i.e. client vs. server based inference)
• Relevant browser/online technologies (Tensorflow.js, WebGL, WebGPU, Off-screen canvas, scheduling)
• Webcam based eye-tracking in Labvanced (with some technical implementation details)
• Details about Labvanced eye-tracking accuracy, tradeoffs, and practical notes when using it
• Data analysis with AoIs and second level metrics (i.e. fixations, blinks, saccades)
• Current limitations and future developments of we Webcam based Eye-Tracking

Week 4 (July 21-25)

Statistical Analysis using R (Angela Andreella)

This course provides participants with the tools to utilize the R programming language for statistical analysis, specifically focusing on tidyverse packages. It covers exploratory data analysis and offers an introduction to linear regression.

Reporting using Quarto (Ottavia Epifania)

Reproducible reports integrate the code used for data analysis with the document that presents the findings, this enabling a continuous flow between the analytical process and its interpretation. While RMarkdown undoubtedly opened the way to this process, Quarto represents the next generation, as it is even easier to use than RMarkdown and includes new features, making the reporting process more accessible. This course provides an introduction to Quarto and its basic features, along with a presentation on how to exploit it functionalities to create polished, professional outputs with embedded code chunks. Some of the topics covered within this seminar are:

• Executable code chunks
• Tables, charts, and references seamlessly
• Reports and papers
• Presentation, posters & so much more