Dr Matt Wall | fMRI Analysis for Beginners

About the speaker Dr Matt Wall completed his PhD in Cambridge, then did post-doctoral positions at Royal Holloway and UCL before selling out and moving into the private sector. He currently works for Invicro, a global imaging company that provides research services for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. His research interests have meandered around somewhat, taking in cognitive psychology, visual psychophysics, pain, psychopharmacology, psychedelics, addiction, neuroendocrinology, and methods development, but all focussed around the use of fMRI. His current collaborative projects involve giving teenagers cannabis and showing women pornography, as well as a number of commercial studies, and ongoing methodological work. About the talk Functional MRI (fMRI) is now a fundamental method in cognitive neuroscience but is still a technically challenging and complex endeavour. This session will provide a very brief and introductory overview to the practical aspects of fMRI research. Necessary background and theoretical concepts will be briefly covered, but the main focus is on understanding the steps involved in analysis of a simple cognitive task scan. This session assumes no previous experience with fMRI and attempts to make the content accessible for beginners. The first half (roughly 1 hour) will be lecture-style content, while the second half will be a live demonstration of a basic analysis with the open-source FSL software. Opportunities to submit questions will be interspersed regularly throughout the session, with suggestions for additional follow-up material also provided.