Pre-Conference Workshops

Pre-Conference Workshop #1
Tuesday, September 28 and Wednesday, September 29, 2010
8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. each day

FUNDAMENTALS OF MATLAB

Alejandro Lleras, PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign

This tutorial is aimed at those with little to no previous knowledge of MATLAB or programming more generally. The goal is to introduce some foundational concepts about programming using MATLAB. To this effect, we will start with a brief description of how computers work and about the underlying philosophy behind a high-level language like MATLAB. We will study the various forms of variables (matrices, structures, cells) as well as discuss the use of scripts and functions in this language. We will also practice using logic and flow control statements and learn how to best utilize MATLAB strengths towards one's programming goals. Ideally, by the end of the workshop, participants will feel more at ease interacting with MATLAB code and know how to go about understanding and modifying code. All participants will be encouraged to bring their own laptops for the practice sessions.


Pre-Conference Workshop #2
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

EEGLAB: BASIC AND ADVANCED TOOLS FOR ELECTOPHYSIOLGOCIAL DATA ANALYSIS

Scott Makeig1, Arnaud Delorme1, Julie Onton2, Tim Mullen1, Christian Kothe1
1University of California, San Diego, 2Naval Health Research Center, San Diego

The purpose of this one-day workshop will be to introduce EEGLAB to those considering its use in their research, to highlight new capabilities recently introduced into EEGLAB, and to accelerate the transition to more advanced uses of EEGLAB for current research users and developers. EEGLAB (sccn.ucsd.edu/eeglab/) is an open source Matlab environment (The Mathworks, Inc.) for the analysis of EEG, MEG and related electrophysiological signals released for non-commercial use as open source software in the public domain under the GNU Public License by the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience (SCCN) of the Institute for Neural Computation at the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla. EEGLAB has been used by Swartz Center researchers and by many other research groups to publish results in many leading journals. Over 3,500 researchers in dozens of countries subscribe to its email discussion list. As an open source project, its functionality can and may be easily extended to include many types of electromagnetic data analysis, and more than twenty specialized EEGLAB plug-in functions have been made available by other groups. The workshop will present overview talks and demonstrations by EEGLAB developers aimed to answer questions including:

- What is the overall structure of the EEGLAB software environment?
- What kinds of electrophysiological data can I process using EEGLAB?
- How does EEGLAB simplify custom Matlab script-based data processing?
- How can I use EEGLAB graphics to explore my data?
- How can I find and remove artifacts and corrupt data?
- How can I apply independent component analysis (ICA) to my data?
- How can I apply time/frequency analysis to my data?
- How can I make subject head models and estimate EEG source locations?
- How can I compare data from multiple subjects?
- How can I explore brain-computer interface (BCI) paradigms?
- How can I contribute new functions and plug-ins to EEGLAB?
- What related experiment control and database resources are available?