Programming for Cognitive and Brain Sciences

PDF version of this document

https://media.readthedocs.org/pdf/pcbs/latest/pcbs.pdf

Git repository on github (contains solutions to exercices, …)

https://github.com/chrplr/PCBS

Instructors

Christophe Pallier <christophe@pallier.org> Cédric Foucault <cedric.foucault@gmail.com> Henri van den Driessche <henri.vandendriessche@ens.fr>

Moodle

https://moodle.u-paris.fr/course/view.php?id=7378

Slack discussion forum

http://cogmaster-pcbs.slack.com (Click https://join.slack.com/t/cogmaster-pcbs/shared_invite/zt-9wid4ime-8~Pw0jKovsbIx1VRawcguQ to join). Use the #general channel to ask questions.

Contents:

• First things first
  • Course description
  • Prerequisites
  • Resources
• Starting from Scratch
  • What is programming?
  • First steps
  • Concepts learned so far
  • Loops
  • Two sprites
  • Conditional execution or branching
  • First series of exercices
  • Variables
  • Second series of exercices
• Software Installation
  • The R statistical software
  • Rstudio Desktop
  • SublimeText code editor
  • Anaconda Python3 distribution
  • The Git version control system
  • The Pygame and Expyriment python modules
  • How To open a Terminal
  • Download course materials
  • Creating a conda environment
• Interacting with a computer (in a Nutshell)
  • The shell
  • Disks, Directories and files
  • filenames, directory structure
  • Working directory. Absolute pathnames vs. relative pathnames (..)
  • What is the PATH?
  • What is a library (or module/package)?
• Running Python
  • Running a python script from the command line
  • Testing a short piece of python code
  • Write code inside a text editor (Edit-run cycle)
  • Using an Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
  • Perform an interactive data analysis with jupyter-notebook or jupyter-lab
  • Developping in Python with Emacs
• Automata and Computers
  • The Computational Theory of Mind
  • What is computation anyway ?
  • The ancestors of the computer: the automata
  • Formal description of an automaton
  • Examples of transition diagrams
  • What is a Computer?
  • Register machines
  • The Seven secrets of computers revealed
  • Programmable computers
  • Compilation and interpretation
  • Operating systems
  • What is a Terminal?
• Representations of numbers, text, images
  • Representation of integers
  • Representation of text
  • Representation of images
• Creating stimuli
  • Static visual stimuli
  • Dynamic visual stimuli
  • Creating and playing sounds
  • More illusions
• Experiments
  • Simple reaction times
  • Decision times
  • Numerical distance effect
  • Posner’s attentional cueing task
  • Lexical Decision Task
  • Stroop Effect
  • A general audio visual stimulus presentation script
  • Sound-picture matching using a touchscreen
  • More examples using Expyriment
• Sending TTL triggers throught the USB
  • DLP-IO8-G
  • Python
  • Reading an input line
  • Arduino
  • Raspberry Pi
• Data Analyses
  • Basic Data Analysis with R
  • Comparing means using Easy ANOVA (Analysis of Variance)
  • Permutation tests
  • Bootstrap
  • Frequency Analysis
• Lexical Statistics
  • Zipf law
  • Benford’s law
  • Neuroimaging
• Simulations
  • Monte Carlo Estimation
  • Fractals
  • Formal systems
  • Artificial Neural networks
• Tools to do Reproducible Science
  • Two tools: literate programming and version control
  • Lesson 101: how to compare files or directories
  • Introducing git
  • Working with remotes
• How to solve problems
  • How to think like a programmer: lessons in problem solving
  • How to report bugs effectively
  • How to solve it by Polya
  • Computer Science Distilled
• Writing clean code
  • Names
  • Functions
  • Successive refinement
  • General
  • Comments
  • Testing
• Projects
• Coding Exercises
  • Flow control
  • Lists
  • Functions
  • Strings
  • Dictionaries
  • File reading and writing
• Regular Expressions
  • Tutorial
  • Example in Cognitive Science research
  • More on the Theory
• Building abstractions with recursive functions and higher-order functions
  • Recursive functions
  • Higher-order functions
  • Reference
• Resources to learn Git

Indices and tables

• Index
• Module Index
• Search Page