Introduction to FMRI

PSYC 405 teaches you how to actually do brain imaging research: how the scanner turns hydrogen physics into a BOLD signal, how that signal relates to neural activity, and how you go from a raw 4D dataset to a defensible statistical map. The weekly hands-on sessions at Bilkent's MRI scanner are the core of the course — you'll design small experiments, collect data, and analyze it in Python using GLMs, preprocessing pipelines, and connectivity/multivariate methods, with assessment driven by ten quizzes, a midterm, and a final essay. It's the natural bridge between psychology coursework and cognitive neuroscience research, and effectively a prerequisite for any thesis or lab work that uses neuroimaging.