Matlab for Psychology and Neuroscience course

This is the website for a 3-day intensive Matlab programming course offered at the University of Nottingham. The aim of the course is to get beginners up to speed in the basics of Matlab and the basics of computer programming. After an introduction to concepts like variables, functions and other important aspects of the Matlab language, we quickly move on to exercises that help attendees with analyzing and plotting data.

The course combines brief lecture-style presentations, lots of hands-on exercises, and interactive exercises. We place emphasis on solving problems close to those in a real research setting. We have also tailored the program with a pre-arrival questionnaire, helping us to gauge the level of the group, shared interests, and particular aspects to concentrate on.

Next dates

update Unfortunately, we had to postpone the 2023 April course. We are currently looking at running the course at another time and will consider different formats (potentially including an online option).

Until then, you can register your interest for upcoming courses.

~~The next course will be running from 19-21 April 2023 (during the University Easter break). As people have returned to travel, we have made the decision to switch back to the in-person format.~~

Matlab

Matlab is a powerful scripting and programming language. It is used in many disciplines to analyse and visualise data. Many cognitive neuroscience and psychology labs also use Matlab to perform behavioural and psychophysical experiments, do their statistics and produce publication-quality figures.

Why here? Why us?

The instructor(s) are part of Visual Neuroscience group - a large group of researchers with an interdisciplinary background and a particular interest in the visual system. Because our wider research interests include neuroimaging (fMRI at 7T and 3T), EEG, TMS, psychophysics, and computational modelling there is a lot of need for and expertise in quantitative methods. Hence Matlab.

Who should come?

Graduate students, post-docs and anyone else who want to learn how to use Matlab in their applications. No previous programming experience is required. For intermediate users, we’ll aim to provide challenge problems to introduce more advanced concepts and applications, but if you are already very comfortable with programming, get in touch for more details of what to expect.

Do people like the course? And why?

Feedback from our previous courses has been very positive. We’ve had many attendees from abroad - both Europe (Germany, Denmark, …) and further afield (Egypt, US, …). Most people feel that it’s a challenging 3 days but that they leave with some very useful insights, have a good idea of how to turn what they have learnt to their own research…

“Great course!”
“Thoroughly enjoyed it”
“Terrific course” –
“Extremely competent lecturer and demonstrator”
“[being able to] to branch off with your own relevant topics”
“…the way the course catered to multiple levels of competency with Matlab”
“Topics covered: tailored to build the bridge for a beginner to work with images and data”

We’ll continue to try to tailor the material based on feedback from course attendees and pre-arrival questionnaires.

Schluppeck, Madan, Scholes

Matlab for Psychology and Neuroscience course