Developmental Neurobiology: From Worms to Mammals

ABOUT THE PRACTICAL COURSE

Our Centre combines diverse sets of technical skills and scientific expertise related to the development of the nervous system, encompassing patterning and fate specification, neurite outgrowth and guidance, synapse formation and function, and neuroplasticity.

The course will be given by lecturers from the U.S. and Europe that include David Redish, Loren Frank, David Foster, Francesco Battaglia and David Robbe.

For more information please visit our website

The Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme is offering a new summer course that will introduce the fundamental techniques of “behaviour for neuroscientists”. This intensive course will cover different technical skills (programming, electronics (sensors/actuators), video acquisition and analysis, animal training, closed-loop control, and virtual reality) applied to different neuroscience model organisms (zebrafish, rodents, flies, and humans). However, the course will be entirely “hands-on” and requires no specific technical or neuroscience background.

The course “Homology in NeuroEthology” is organised by the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme in Lisbon. The course will take place on November 26-28, 2014, at Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. You can see the full programme here.

Quantitative and qualitative studies of behaviour are fundamental in our effort to understand brain function and malfunction. Recently, the techniques for studying behaviour, along with those for monitoring and manipulating neural activity during behaviour, have progressed rapidly. Therefore, we are organizing a summer course to provide promising young neuroscience investigators with a comprehensive introduction to state-of-the-art techniques in behavioural neuroscience.

Computational Neuroscience is a rapidly evolving field whose methods and techniques are critical for understanding and modelling the brain, and also for designing and interpreting experiments. Mathematical modeling is one of the few tools available to cut through the vast complexity of neurobiological systems and their many interacting elements.

In this advanced course the concept of hierarchy is going to be explored from the point of view of theoretical and experimental neuroscience as well as from a machine learning perspective. In lecture-driven talks we will review what is known and discuss which are the open and most relevant questions at the field. Specifically, how theoretical neuroscience and machine learning integrate hierarchy to describe neuronal networks and which anatomical and behavioral data supports the existence of such in the nervous system.