COURSES

Courses of XLII cycle

Course	Hours	ETCS	Years targeted by the course	Course description	Teachers	Mandatory	Final test
Visiting Professor Seminar Series: “Tuning of cortical processing through gradient of cell types”	8	1	First	-Taxonomy of cortical cell types -Canonical circuits and cortical processing -Macroscopic gradients in the mammalian cortex -Relevance of macroscopic gradients to neurological disorders -Biogeography of cortical fast-spiking neurons: linking gradients to computation by tuning microcircuits	Maximiliano Josè Nigro	Yes	No
AI tools for biomedical data analysis	12	1.5	first	Advanced AI;  Biomedical Data Analysis; Graph Neural Networks (GNNs); Transformers; Multiple Instance Learning (MIL); Multimodal Learning; Genomic Data; Whole Slide Images (WSI); Cancer Research; DECIDER Framework; Personalized Medicine	Marta Lovino	No	No
Methods to decode EEG	16	2	first	Preprocessing (Filters, ASR, ICA, epoching, time-frequency), basic statistical inference on ERPs (t-test, ANOVA, TFCE) and advanced methods (UNFOLD, RIDE, lmeEEG).	Antonino Visalli	Yes	No
Biomedical Reseach principles and methodology	12	1.5	first	Literature searches in the biomedical field: PubMed vs. AI-driven searches The issue of Predatory Journals Scientific journal selection and Bibliometric profiling of authors Open science approach: from theory to practice Publishing open access at UNIMORE How to use IRIS Unimore, the open institutional archive Open data limitations for research in humans Ethics in biomedical research: basic principles, gender and race discrimination issues Performing biomedical research abroad: opportunities and caveats	Carmela Palazzi , Nicola De Bellis, Maria Chiara Bassi, Simone Cocchi, Andrea Solieri, Raffaella Ingrosso, Valentina Davighi, Veronique Fiorini, Enrica Baldelli, Erica Molinari, Vittorio Colomba, Rossana Cecchi, Johanna Blom, Corrado Confalonieri, Serena Carra, Giulia Curia, Sandra Marmiroli, Carlo Salvarani, Marco Vinceti, Giovanna Zamboni, Ferdinando di Maggio	Yes	No
Methodology and Techniques for Neurophysiological Research	16	2	first	Neurobiology, Synaptic connections and neuronal properties, fMRI, Broca areas and brain functions. MRI principles, DTI, DWI, tractography, EEG, Point Neuron models and Brain virtual Twin	Daniela Gandolfi, Fausta Lui	Yes	No
PhD Spring School –Residential course on research methodology	24	3	first	How to write a scientific paper Study design. Measures of disease frequency. Measures of association Validity and efficiency + Sources of bias and misclassification + Introduction to confounding Statistics vs Epidemiology. Time-dependent variables and the central role of rate Beware of age at diagnosis Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) and role of variables: confounders, effect modifiers, mediators, synergistic factors, colliders Poisson, logistic, and log-binomial regression. Survival analysis and Cox model, Time-varying counfounders. G-models. Models for correlated outcomes Data analysis in biomedical research: principles and applications	Dario Consonni, Lauren A. Wise	Yes	No
Scientific English	18	2.5	first	Written and oral english practices. Scientific jargon with examples	Tamara Sassi	Yes	Yes
Neural Interfaces and Neuroengineering	8	1	First	Outline: Give everyone a functional understanding of neurons, nervous system pathologies and what is a neural interface. Content: 1. Introduce nervous system fundamentals: neuron, synapse, action potentials, pathways (afferent/efferent), loops. 2. Brief functional anatomy: brain, spinal cord, peripheral nerves. 3. Clinical needs and pathologies in brain, spine and periphery: stroke, SCI, Parkinson, epilepsy, neuropathies, amputation with specific motor, sensory and cognitive deficits 4. Define (overview) neural interfaces again with brain, spine, periphery: sensing, stimulation, open loop/closed loop. Sensing intention vs sensing pathology biomarkers, e.g., Parkinson biomarker in adaptive DBS vs motor intention to activate prostheses, exoskeletons or FES.	Noemi Gozzi (Meta, New york)	Yes	No
Scientific writing and communicating science	16	2	second	From basic principle of scientific writing to a description of all written scientific productions (posters, reviews, case report). How to interact with peers and the peer review process	Chiara Gabbi	Yes	No
PhD Day	8	1	First, second and third	Annual presentation of the research project protocols of all doctoral student. Students of the first year will presente an outline of theri project, whereas studentis of the second and third years will present an update of their project.		Yes	No

All activities are mandatory for first-year doctoral students and optional for those in their second and third years.