I was a graduate teaching assistant for BIM 289B: Multi-modadl neuroimaging techniques with Professor Audrey Fan. I held office hours, graded projects, and facilitated course discussion and tutorial. This course was a technical electivev in Biomedical Engineering Department at UC Davis. I was on course staff in Winter 2022.

A full description of this course is below.

Rationale

Technologies to understand the brain have surged in the past decades, including neuroimaging techniques that provide non-invasive and clinical assessment of brain structure and function. This expansion enhances our collective ability to understand brain health and its pathologies, but it also means that modern neuroscience requires interdisciplinary research approaches.

This course brings together trainees from biomedical engineering, neuroscience, and medical imaging fields to explore multi-modal neuroimaging approaches. The class is organized into three modules – brain structural connectivity, functional connectivity, and hybrid PET (positron emission tomography) and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). Each module centers around a “mini-project” that builds from a primary literature paper, with (1) a neuroimaging methods deep-dive; (2) image analysis software; and (3) sample dataset. Through journal clubs and project presentations, we will also model critical discourse on neuroimaging technologies, their synergies, and unresolved questions due to their limitations.

Learning goals

1. Describe several advanced (state-of-the-art) MRI and PET neuroimaging methods and how brain biomarkers are derived from the scans
2. Critically read interdisciplinary neuroscience papers that integrate imaging and basic neuroscience techniques
3. Analyze brain images and derive neuroscience interpretations using neuroimaging software and MATLAB.