SUBJECT

Matlab/Octave Programming

practical

master

Faculty of Education and Psychology

4

Semester 3

Autumn semester

Aim of the course:

The goal of the course is to introduce students to MATLAB®, a high-level technical programming language, widely used in various scientific and engineering fields. A particular focus is given to applications in cognitive science, cognitive psychology and neuroscience. The course duration is one semester, broken down to 8 sessions.

Learning outcome, competences

knowledge:

• students can think in algorithms, write codes, be self-sufficient in loading datasets, apply statistics, process data and visualise results.

attitude:

• Selfsufficiency, utilisation of knowledge in scientific communication, presentation

skills:

• can administer and evaluate simple tests with the guidance of a professional

Topics of the course

• FUNDAMENTALS (arrays, matrices, variables, arithmetic precedences, matrix algebra)
• DATA HANDLING (data types, data import, data export, importing from spreadsheets)
• GRAPHICS (plotting data, chart types, 2D and 3D plots)
• STATISTICS (probability distributions, histograms, basic parametric and non-parametric statistical methods, hypothesis testing)
• SPECIAL APPLICATIONS 1: Psychophysics toolbox (installing, screen functions, construction of images, timing, colours, Gabor patches, movie, sound, input from keyboard and other external devices)
• SPEC. APP 2: Experimental control (timing, scheduling, input output ports, device control)
• SPEC. APP 3: Neuronal data processing (sampling, filters, FFT, kernels, wavelet, clustering, dimensionality reduction, PCA, EEG analysis)
• SPEC. APP 4: MODELING (Neural networks, delta rule, back propagation, 3 layer perceptron, neuron models)

Learning activities, learning methods: Lectures and interactive discussions

Learning requirements, mode of evaluation, criteria of evaluation:

requirements

• Attendance, project: write one program that includes reading data from file, data visualising, computing statistics, plotting result, writing results to file.

mode of evaluation: written exam

criteria of evaluation:

• students should be able to design a program by the end of the course.

Required reading

• Zoltan Nadasdy: MATLAB® Fundamentals with Cognitive Psychology and Neuroscience examples, TÁMOP 4.1.2.A/1-11/1-2011-0018

Recommended reading

• MATLAB for Neuroscientists: An Introduction to Scientific Computing in MATLAB
• David A. Rosenbaum: MATLAB for Behavioral Scientists
• Borgo, Soranzo and Grassi: MATLAB for Psychologists