Assessment: Students will be required to make a 30 minute presentation in class discussing a pertinent article (set by Instructor). This presentation will form 20% of the final mark. Students will then be asked to submit two written assignments. The first will be a 2000 word critique of an fMRI paper (a standard paper will be allocated for this purpose) which will constitute 30% of the final mark and the second will be a 5000 word proposal for an fMRI experiment. This will constitute the 40% of the final mark. Class participation and attendance will constitute the remaining 10% of the final mark. Detailed outlines of the written assignments will be distributed in class.
For the class presentation you will need to outline the basic results, methods and findings of the paper you have chosen so that all other students get a good grasp of the paper. You will also need to raise issues and questions relevant to the particular paper and the general topic of discussion for that week. That is, you will need to lead class discussion. The aim of the class presentation is threefold;
1. to give you further experience in presenting to a group (every chance you get to do this is invaluable)
2. presenting a paper forces you to get an in depth understanding of the paper - this is difficult to do for everything you ever read but is worth doing for important articles
3. presentations are a good way of getting people talking about the concepts and ideas involved
Giving a good presentation is a difficult and for some daunting task. There is plenty of advice for how to pull it off on the web (one of which you can access here - Brian Scholl's advice in pdf). My basic advice is to speak cleary, use lots of pictures and by implication minimise words on slides, never be afraid to back track and always be prepared for questions. Other than that, I have a basic framework for presentations I give that goes a little like this:
1. Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em
2. Tell 'em
3. Tell 'em what you told 'em.
Simple eh? Feel free to come and discuss your presentation with me before you have to give it.
A standard paper has been set for all students to critique - so obviously, discussions with your classmates may help you clarify ideas. But it will be important that you don't make carbon copies of those ideas in addressing the set paper - clarity of experssion (your own expression) will be considered for this assignment. The set paper is the following:
Marois, R., Chun, M.M., & Gore, J.C. (2000) Neural Correlates of the Attentional Blink, Neuron, 28, 299-308. (pdf)
I didn't select this paper because I don't like it! On the contrary, it's exploring processes of attention that I'm greatly interested in. This is not to say the study doesn't have it's problems, but to encourage you to avoid trampling on every trivial instance of design or analysis that you think they missed. Instead, focus on the big issues. What would have been different had they changed their design in a particular way. Are there components missing from their design and analysis that make their interpratations shaky? These kinds of questions are more important than pointing out that they don't report the degrees of freedom for one comparison (for example).
Your assignment should have the following components:
1. A brief (one paragraph) outline of the theory behind the experiment and the basic results and consclusions drawn.
2. A more detailed critique of the design and analysis (3 to 4 paragraphs) focussing on major issues as discussed above.
3. A brief (1-2 paragraphs) outline of an alternate design to address the same question - how would your design address your criticisms of their design.
This is short piece (2000 words) which I appreciate makes it a much more difficult task. But like presentation skills, succinct writing skills are invaluable and only practice makes perfect. My advice on this front is to avoid trying to write to the word limit. Instead, write the paper including everything you feel is relavant. Do a word count and then edit like hell! It is the editing process that makes the writing succinct!
The second assigment is write a proposal for an fMRI experiment. This can be an experiment addressing a question in your own current field of research or from a completely different field - your choice. The idea is to get you to think about a theoretical question, design an fMRI experiment to address that question, consider the appropriate statistical analyses needed to explore your data and justify those choices. So this assignment should have the following components:
1. A brief introduction to the field of research outlining the importance of the question being asked and major previous findings (particularly any relevant imaging findings).
2. An outline of our design and justification of your choices.
3. An outline of the proposed statistical analyses again with a justification of your choices.
4. A brief consideration of the expected outcomes of your experiment - this is the most speculative part of the assignment, but don't let your imaginations run too far!
Alhough, this is a longer piece (5000 words) it involves a more detailed approach to design and analysis within fMRI research and so will be equally difficult to "fit" within the limit.
I will be happy to discuss your work prior to the due date and will look at outlines for the assignment. But I won't be reading any drafts before it is due.