Summer School
NEURO Graduate Programme
1st to the 3rd of july 2025
4th of july 2025: Hackaton (optional)
Join us for the first edition of the Neurograd Summer School in Cognitive Neuroscience, held in the vibrant city of Lyon! This intensive program, running the first week of July, offers a unique blend of lectures, hands-on workshops, and social activities, all focused on open science, data analysis, and experimental design in cognitive neuroscience. Participants will learn essential skills to program and deploy behavioral experiments in the lab or on the web, analyze data using models, and deal with multimodal data acquisition (physiology, neuroimaging, etc.).
They will also have the opportunity to discover emerging approaches combining cognitive science with computer vision, virtual reality and AI. Designed for students completing L3, M1, or M2, the school welcomes international participants, providing an inclusive environment where both beginners and advanced learners can thrive. Embark on a transformative educational journey and explore Lyon’s rich cultural heritage while advancing your scientific skills! You’ll have the opportunity to engage with leading experts in the field, visit cutting-edge neuroscience facilities, and collaborate on exciting collective or personal projects during our closing hackathon.
Dates
Main event: 1st to the 3rd of July 2025
Hackathon (optional): 4th of July 2025
Timeline
15st of January: speakers and program announced & registration opens
15st of March: deadline for travel & accommodation grants
15st of April: deadline for registration to the summer school
Preliminary program
Day 1 – Open cognitive (neuro)science & data collection
8h30-9h. Registration and coffee
9h-9h15. Welcoming words by the organizers
9h15-11h30. Lectures. Introduction to open cognitive science. Four interventions of 30 minutes (talk: 20-25 minutes, discussion: 5-10 minutes) with one break of 15 minutes. Topics covered:
The (long) path from ideas to publications: operationalizing, preregistering, analyzing, writing, revising & endorsing
Statistical designs and power calculations
Open-science tools and technologies for cognitive neuroscience + data management (BIDS)
Science as a collective endeavor: from analyses to meta-analyses
Potential speakers: Guillaume Sescousse (general), Nils Kolling (operationalization), Gaëlle Leroux (BIDS), Nicolas Fourcaud-Trocmé (Designs & power), Karim Ndiaye (ICM)
11h30-12h30. Short practical session to briefly present and install Git, Anaconda, Python, and Nodejs (needed for the other practical sessions)
12h30-14h. Lunch open to the local community to stimulate discussion between participants and local students/researchers
14h30-15h30. Lecture. Elements of web programming: HTML/CSS, Javascript and databases. One intervention of 45 minutes and 15 minutes of questions.
Speaker: Romain Ligneul
15h30-18h30. Practical session: learning how to set up a web server, to host a gamified behavioral experiment and to collect data using Prolific.
18h30-20h30. Science Pizza. Simulating experiments and simulating worlds: models come first!
Potential speakers: Lionel Rigoux or Jean Daunizeau (simulating experiments), Jacqueline Scholl, Nils Kolling and/or Daphné Bavelier (gamified experiments)
Day 2 — Data analysis and modeling
9h-10h45. Practical session. Reading and preprocessing data collected on day 1 using Python (Jupyter, Pandas, Numpy and Matplotlib)
11h-12h30. Lectures. Advanced data analysis and behavioral modeling. Four interventions of 30 minutes (talk: 20-25 minutes, discussion: 5-10 minutes). Topics covered:
General linear models
Reinforcement learning models
Drift diffusion & Bayesian models
Potential speakers: Alizée Persée-Lopez (ICM), Philippe Domenech (INM, Sainte-Anne), Hanneke den Ouden (Donders Institute, RL), Seongmin Park (ISC, Bayesian)
12h30-14h00. Lunch and visit of CRNL premises (in two groups), MEG/EEG rooms
14h00-18h30. Practical session: analyzing and modeling the data preprocessed in the morning using DDM and RL approaches. For more proficient students, coding of an optimal Bayesian observer.
18h30-23h30. Social event with students and speakers (e.g., dinner in a restaurant followed by drinks on a peniche)
Day 3 — Towards clinical and real-life applications
9h-10h30. Lectures. Introduction to multimodal data acquisition. Three interventions of 30 minutes (talk: 20-25 minutes, discussion: 5-10 minutes). Topics covered:
Closing the loop with live video, physiology and electrophysiology analysis
Cognitive science on the smartphone: promises and pitfalls of mobile cognitive testing
Computational psychiatry and cognitive testing in clinical populations
Potential speakers: Marion Rouault (ICM), Fabien Vinckier (ICM), Stephen Whitmarsh (ICM),
10h45-12h45. Practical session: synchronization of the behavioral experiment with an external apparatus (skin conductance sensor recorded with Arduino) using serial port communications, signal alignment and rudimentary analysis of skin conductance data.
12h45-13h30. Lunch
13h30-15h30. Practical session: adapt the experiment for smartphones and record accelerometer data during the task.
15h30-16h30. Virtual reality and AI for behavioral sciences. Two interventions of 30 minutes (talk: 20-25 minutes, discussion: 5-10 minutes).
Potential speakers: Alessandro Farne (VR), Pauline Mouches or Romain Quentin (AI), Prateep (Berlin)
16h30-18h30. Visit of the Neuro-immersion platform at Impact
Tour guide: Clément Desoches
19h-20h. Art-science performance (EEGsynth or else) and closing drinks at the CRNL
Day 4 — Hackathon to kickstart personal projects
A subset of the students (6 to 8) with preselected personal projects may participate in a 1-day hackathon to make progress on their own project with the help of RobustCircuit and local TA’s.