COURSE DESCRIPTION

See the roll of honor - who's taken the course in the past

Modern systems neuroscience increasingly relies on large-scale population recordings generated by high-throughput electrophysiology and calcium imaging in behaving animals. These datasets create new opportunities to understand neural coding, circuit dynamics, and brain–behavior relationships, but they also require specialised approaches for preprocessing, dimensionality reduction, statistical modelling, and interpretation.

This course will introduce key concepts and statistical tools for processing and analyzing neural population activities. We will first address the advantages, limitations, and technique-specific preprocessing challenges associated with high-density electrophysiology and calcium imaging, and then focus on the analytical methods for neural population activity, with particular emphasis on multivariate methods that identify low-dimensional representations of neural activity and relate them with animal behavior, external stimulus, or task variables. We will also discuss emerging topics, such as network analysis, inter-regional communication, and the interpretation of distributed neural dynamics across brain areas.

Trainees are expected to have basic familiarity with linear algebra and coding in MATLAB/Python. Lectures will be paired with daily hands-on sessions, allowing students to apply the methods directly to real or example datasets. A final project will give trainees the opportunity to integrate the concepts learned throughout the course and analyse a selected neural population dataset. We encourage applications from senior PhD students, post-doctoral fellows, research scientists, and early-career faculty members from diverse backgrounds who are interested in systems neuroscience and neural data analysis.

2026 FACULTY ROSTER

Mikio Aoi, University of California San Diego

Kenneth Harris, University College London 

Xiaoxuan Jia, Tsinghua University

Abhilasha Joshi, National Center for Biological Sciences, Bangalore

Jaekyung Kim, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Yu Mu, Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Masafumi Oizumi, The University of Tokyo

Hanchuan Peng, Fudan University

Mark Reimers, Michigan State University

Jennifer Sun, University College London

Quan Wen, University of Science and Technology of China  

Jiamin Wu, Tsinghua University

Chris Xu, Cornell University

2026 PRICING (INCLUDING TUITION, BOARD AND LODGING): 1400 USD / 10000 CNY

No payment is due until the selection decisions are made, but any applicant requiring financial support (i.e. stipends) should make that request in written form during the online application. The admissions process is need-blind, your financial situation will not be considered before admission decisions are made.