Syllabus

BCSC 204: Syllabus

Fall 2025

Time and Location

Time: Mondays and Wednesdays, 11:50am – 1:05pm
Room: Hylan 202

Personnel

Instructor: Dr. Chung-Lin Martin Yang
Office Hours (both in person and Zoom): 10:30 – 11:30am Mon/Wed (starting 8/27)

Graduate TA: Paul Cavanah
Office Hours: 5-6pm Tuesday

Undergraduate TA: Vanessa Yang
Office Hours: 2-3pm Thursday

Course Description

This lab course introduces methods used in cognitive neuroscience, a field that examines cognitive phenomena in terms of their underpinnings in the brain. It covers brain imaging approaches to studying cognition and provides hands-on knowledge for functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) experiment design and data analysis. This course will give you a sense of what lab research in cog-neuro is like and better prepare you for other research opportunities. Another major requirement of the course is academic writing, so you will also learn how to write a research proposal.

This course follows the College credit hour policy for four-credit courses. This course meets twice weekly for 3 academic hours per week. The course also includes independent out-of-class assignments (group project work, lab notes, and readings) for at least 1 academic hour per week.

Textbooks (recommended but not required)

An introduction to the event-related potential technique by Steven Luck (2e) (on library reserves)
Handbook of functional MRI data analysis by Poldrack, Mumford and Nichols (2011) (on Library reserve). Selected chapters are already posted on Blackboard under “Reserves”.

Software

You will learn to use EEGLAB and SPM12, both of which requires MATLAB. We will also use Excel for behavioral data processing.

Course Requirements

  1. Participation (20.5%): attendance is a basic and important requirement in a lab (and also in any lab where you want to gain research experiences). That said, active participation in the discussions, exercises and lab activities/demos are expected and required. The following items will also be counted toward your participation:
    1. In-class exercises and lab activities (10%): This doesn’t require submissions on Blackboard. You can just show us your completed work while we walk around during the data analysis sessions, and we will keep track of it. If you couldn’t finish the in-class work for any reason (e.g., absence from the class due to illness/emergencies or technical issues), email your make-up work to Vanessa (with explanations of why you couldn’t finish it in class) by noon on the next day after the class. (Each class is worth 1 point of your participation grade). However, if you keep running into the same technical issue that prevents you from completing the work and cannot submit it by noon of the next day, let us know and we will help you out. (Note that the datasets for the in-class work are different from those used in the lab assignments and lab report.) The lab demos are required and also counted as in-class exercises.
    2. 3 short quizzes (3% each) (see schedule below for dates): Each quiz contains 5-6 questions (multiple-choice and T/F questions). As long as you pay attention to the lectures/lab instructions/lab demo and actively participate in the lab exercises, these quizzes should be easy.
    3. Participation in other groups’ presentations (1.5%): everyone should ask at least 3 questions or give at least 3 comments/suggestions in total throughout the semester (not 3 questions per presentation). We will keep track of this!
  2. Research ethics (3%)
    1. Plagiarism quiz (1%) (graded as Complete/Incomplete)
    2. CITI training (2%) (graded as Complete/Incomplete)
  3. Lab assignments (10%): mostly just output of graphs from data processing (submitted individually)
    1. EEG: two assignments (2.5% each)
    2. fMRI: two assignments (2.5% each)
  4. Lab report (min. 6 pages plus one page of references) (6%): Write up a brief report including the following: introduction (including a thorough literature review), method, results, discussion and conclusion. Detailed instructions will be posted on Blackboard and also given in class. (Individual submission)
  5. Literature review: A review of journal articles discussed in class OR articles of your choice that you found interesting. Critique the study and discuss how the study might be done differently if you were to replicate it. Detailed instructions will be posted on Blackboard. The review should be at least 3 pages long plus 1 page of references. (4.5%) (Individual submission)
  6. Proposal writing (23.5%)
    Each of the following items will be due on different dates. Instructions for each item will be posted on Blackboard under “Assignments”. Each group will choose one topic and work on it together. Equal contribution from each group member to the project is expected. When submitting your group assignments, please either put the link to your Google Docs in the submission comment box OR use two different font colors to differentiate the parts written by each group member.
    1. Submission of 3 possible topics on Blackboard as a word document (3.5%) (group submission)
    2. Write-up of motivation/hypotheses/research questions (3.5%) (group submission)
    3. Write-up of experimental design (3.5%) (group submission)
    4. Final proposal (12 pages of text and figures, plus a one-page abstract and references) (13%) (group submission)
    All written assignments should follow the same format: 1” margins, double-spaced, 12-pt Times New Roman, course number and your name on the header instead of the main body of text. For every single written assignment, be sure to properly cite your resources. Citation should follow the APA format. A maximum of 5 pts will be deducted for all graded written assignments if the format fails to meet the stated requirements here.
  7. Project presentations (31%): Grading is based on several criteria, including clarity of slides, organization, delivery, and handling of questions from the audience.
    For each presentation, please indicate the percentage of the contribution by each group member on the bottom of the title slide
    (e.g., Hypothesis: Martin 40%; Paul 60%;
    Literature review; Martin 50%; Paul 50%;
    Research questions: Martin 50%; Paul 50%)
    1. Group presentation of topic, motivation and hypothesis (9.5%)
    2. Group presentation of detailed experimental design and analysis (9.5%)
    3. Group presentation of final project (12%)
  8. Reflection (1.5%)

Grading

The final grades will be based upon the following scale:

  • A 93 -100
  • A- 90 - 92
  • B+ 87 - 89
  • B 84 – 86
  • B- 80 - 83
  • C+ 77 – 79
  • C 73 – 76
  • C- 70 – 72
  • D+ 67 – 69
  • D 63 – 66
  • D- 60 – 62
  • E below 60