Functional MRI of High-Level Vision
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this graduate seminar on using functional magnetic resonance imaging to study high-level vision, including object recognition, mental imagery, visual attention, perceptual awareness, and visual memory. Lectures cover the theoretical background of each topic alongside what fMRI methodology and experimental design can and cannot reveal about brain function. Students read, present, and critique recently published neuroimaging papers, and write detailed proposals for original fMRI experiments of their own design. The course assumes prior coursework in statistics and in perception or cognition. Materials include the full lecture schedule, reading lists of primary journal articles, and assignment descriptions, all freely downloadable under MIT's open license. The course aims to make students critical readers of neuroimaging literature and capable designers of theoretically grounded studies rather than passive consumers of brain-imaging results.