https://studiegids.vu.nl/en/courses/2024-2025/P_MBRIMAG_AIfMRI is the main method we have of imaging activations of the living human brain, and thereby probe the computational mechanisms underpinning our cognitive repertoire. The goal of this course is to give you an idea of the awesome possibilities and annoying pitfalls of functional brain imaging, but most importantly, to give you a solid foundation for further learning. At the end of the course, you will be able to devise a valid fMRI experiment, and perform the basic analysis on the resulting data using state-of-the-art open science and open source tools.In this course we will teach you the ins and outs of brain imaging, that is, fMRI. We will teach you everything from the basics of signal analysis, to experimental design, to statistics. Some of the newest cutting-edge techniques, including pattern classification analysis, connectivity modelling, and resting state network analysis, are also discussed.Every week, there will be one or two lecture, interspersed with 3 to 4 practicals/'werkcolleges' in total. The course is broadly divided into two parts; the first half of the course serves to teach you the very basics of signal analysis and experimentation. We believe this basis is necessary to later start to think independently and academically about research in your future field. In this first phase of the course the weekly lecture will treat theory while the practicals will allow you to wet your toes with this material. This way we try to combine theory and practice. In the second half of the course, you will already know a lot about what Brain Imaging entails. Then, we will switch gears a bit, and teach you what's going on in the neuroimaging field right now. That means that during the weekly lecture we will use research articles to illustrate the state of the art. In the practicals we'll move towards letting you perform an entire fMRI analysis yourselves. In this second part of the course we'll also focus more and more on recent articles that show us the state-of-the-art in neuroimaging.Final Exam, open-end & MC questions 70% Quizzes on Canvas 20% Perusall reading participation 10%We will use articles describing current research.Prior knowledge of Python programming and statistics is important for following the practicals.Fluency in the Python programming language.