On June 26 and 27, 2013, a two-day EPOS training on Brain Imaging will be held at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The organizer is Dirk Heslenfeld. The course is an intensive, hands-on, 2-day introduction to the area of functional brain imaging. We will briefly discuss EEG, MEG, PET, and then focus on fMRI. The acquisition and analysis of functional and structural images will be discussed in detail. Lectures and question hours will focus on physical principles, image acquisition, experimental design, data processing, and statistical analysis. On Wednesday evening we will visit the facilities at the VU in order to acquire an actual dataset. On Thursday afternoon, we will analyze these data in small supervised groups. The course will teach students the whole pathway from task setup and data acquisition to data processing and statistical testing. In addition, the integration of EEG and fMRI data will be demonstrated (as a sequel of the EEG/fMRI toolkit held in May). The setup of the course is practical and interactive. For PhD students, this course is an unique opportunity to get acquainted with functional brain imaging techniques for present or future use.

Deadline for registration is June, 15.

On May 30, a one-day EPOS training on EEG and fMRI Co-registration will be held at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. The organizer is Jan van Strien. This course is an introduction to combined EEG-fMRI registration, focusing on equipment, setup, and EEG preprocessing. Different methods of correcting the EEG for scanner artifacts will be discussed and practiced both on optimal and suboptimal EEG-data acquired in previous combined EEG/fMRI research. The correction of gradient and ballistocardiogram artifacts by means of average artifact substraction and independent component analysis will be demonstrated. Artifact correction routines from both VisionAnalyzer and EEGLAB will be employed. This course will only shortly discuss the possibilities of integrated EEG-fMRI data processing. Note that, because there is no permanent EEG/fMRI set-up at Erasmus University, a “live” demonstration of combined EEG/fMRI data acquisition is not possible.

EPOS will hold its annual meeting on June 25, 2013 at the VU University in Amsterdam. The meeting  is open to all PhD students and all faculty interested in EPOS research. EPOS has invited Geoff Cumming (Melbourne) as the keynote speaker.

On November 1-2, 2012, the two-day EPOS Toolkit Computational Modeling will be held at the VU in Amsterdam. The organizers are Jaap Murre and Martijn Meeter.Course description: Computational modelling is at once appealing and daunting for many PhD students. Appealing because it offers a way to bring theoretical depth to a project. Daunting because for beginners it is utterly unclear how one should go about constructing a model. There are many kinds of computational models, and few come with a step-by-step manual for how to construct your own.

On June 15,  2012, (preceding the EPOS annual meeting) an EPOS workshop on  ethics in research will be held by Wery van den Wildenberg at the University of  Amsterdam. The workshop on this important topic  is intended for all EPOS PhD students, but may also be valuable for post docs or other researchers.