Minicourse-25

Synopsis: During our mini-course, participants will acquire the necessary skills to design an fNIRS experiment, preprocess the recorded data, and running an analysis pipeline. Moreover, we will present several options to visualize data and present findings. The Satori educational (EDU) software will be used throughout the mini-course to guide the participants along the process. The course begins with a brief recap on the basic principles of fNIRS, followed by general considerations for experimental design, including a deeper look at possible signal distortions. After this initial introduction, a video showing a previously recorded experiment will be shown. The dataset from this experiment will be available online before the course begins. The following parts of the course will mainly focus on a hands-on session for preprocessing and analysis of the example dataset mentioned above using the freely available Satori EDU software. The various components of the fNIRS signal will be explained and general guidelines for data acquisition and preprocessing will be demonstrated. After the data preprocessing is complete, possible analysis methods will be discussed based on the research question defined during the experimental design. Finally, we will discuss the results and invite participants to participate in a question and answer session.

Learning objectives: Participants will acquire the necessary knowledge base to apply fNIRS solutions to answer their research questions. A basic framework from experiment design to final results is provided. Advanced fNIRS experiments and procedures can be built on this foundation.

Software download: Please follow the instructions at this link to install the Satori Software.