TUTORIALS

Welcome to the COSYNE 2025 Tutorials!

Our tutorials offer an exciting opportunity to dive deeper into key topics at the interface of systems neuroscience and computational theory. Each session is designed for researchers and students eager to expand their knowledge through hands-on learning and insights from experts in the field. From foundational methods to cutting-edge advancements, these tutorials will equip you with practical skills and a richer understanding of the theories shaping today's research.

Explore the tutorials below and get ready to enhance your COSYNE 2025 experience!

Talmo Pereira
Tutorials Chair, COSYNE 2025

Cosyne 2025 Tutorial Session Sponsored by the Simons Foundation

TOPIC: Foundations of Transformers in Neuroscience

SPEAKER: Eva Dyer, Georgia Institute of Technology

DATE: 27 March 2025

TIME: 12:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

In this tutorial, we’ll introduce the fundamentals of transformers and their applications in neuroscience using our new software package, torch_brain. Participants will explore how transformers can be used to analyze both electrophysiology (event-based) and calcium imaging (time-series) data. This tutorial welcomes participants from diverse backgrounds, giving beginners straightforward tools to fine-tune pretrained models on their own data and offering advanced users insights into strategies for building large-scale models. By the end, attendees will be equipped with practical tools and knowledge for creating scalable, adaptable neural decoding models across diverse datasets.

Please keep in mind that the tutorial has a limited number of participants and that a separate registration fee is required to attend. When registering for the main meeting, select the COSYNE Tutorial add-on.

Eva Dyer
Georgia Institute of Technology

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY:

Eva Dyer (she/they) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Dyer leads the Neural Data Science (NerDS) Lab, which focuses on data-centric AI, representation learning, and AI for science. A key area of the lab’s research focuses on AI for neuroscience, where they aim to develop tools to better understand the brain and neural computation, and to uncover abstractions of natural intelligence for creating new brain-inspired AI. Eva earned all of their degrees in Electrical & Computer Engineering, including a Ph.D. and M.S. from Rice University and a B.S. from the University of Miami. Eva has received numerous honors, including a Sloan Fellowship, NSF CAREER Award, McKnight Foundation Technological Innovations in Neuroscience Award, and CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar Award.

COSYNE Tutorials are sponsored by the Simons Foundation. Past COSYNE Tutorials can be found here.

NWB Data Standard and DANDI Archive for Neurophysiology Tutorial

DATE: 27 March 2025

TIME: 9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.

ORGANIZERS: Ryan Ly and Ben Dichter

The goal of this tutorial is to teach you how to share your neurophysiology data using the Neurodata Without Borders (NWB) data standard and the DANDI Archive and how to use NWB data available on DANDI. NWB standardizes the storage of neurophysiology data and metadata to facilitate data analysis, sharing, and reuse. The DANDI Archive now has 300+ publicly available datasets in NWB, including from the Allen Institute, International Brain Laboratory, MICRONS project, and over 150 individual labs. In this tutorial, we will introduce several new tools to convert data to NWB, publish data to DANDI, and stream data from DANDI. We will also introduce new community tools for data analysis and management that are integrated with NWB, so this tutorial will be useful for both new and returning attendees.

At this tutorial, we will teach you how to:

  • convert neurophysiology data to NWB and publish it on DANDI using the new NWB GUIDE app and other tools

  • read NWB data streamed from DANDI using LINDI for efficient streaming

  • process, analyze, and manage NWB data using popular community tools, including tools that have not previously presented as part of this tutorial

Bring your laptop to work along with parts of the tutorial. To get familiar with NWB and DANDI prior to attending, please see this documentation.

There is NO additional fee to attend. When registering for the main meeting, select the NWB Data Standard and DANDI Archive for Neurophysiology Tutorial.

Learn to Use the International Brain Laboratory (IBL) Brainwide Map Dataset

DATE: 27 March 2025

TIME: 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

ORGANIZERS: Hannah Bayer, Gaelle Chapuis, and Mayo Faulkner

The IBL released a Brainwide Map of mouse brain neural activity during decision-making. We want you to use it to test your own hypotheses. In this tutorial, we will teach you to search and download datasets, do basic analyses, and give tips for more advanced computation. We will also demonstrate how to upload your analysis results to our visualization website. Bring your laptop to work along with the demonstration.

Limited to 100 people. There is NO additional fee to attend. When registering for the main meeting, select the IBL Brainwide Map Dataset Tutorial.