The targeted public for the school are Master students, PhD students, post-doctoral fellows, faculty members as well as research professionals, primarily working in neuroscience or psychology to study cognition, and using functional neuroimaging methods. Individuals with an engineering or computer science backgrounds and a strong interest in functional neuroimaging will also likely strive at the school.

We highly recommend some prior experience with coding in a language such as Matlab, Octave, R or Python before joining the school. Some familiarity with Python in particular would be a plus, as a lot of the packages introduced at the school are based on that language, but this is not a requirement.

In addition to coding, we recommend some training in statistics as well as familiarity with at least one of the following neuroimaging techniques: structural MRI, EEG, MEG, functional MRI. The brainhack school is unfortunately not able to accomodate complete beginners, as participants will need to know enough about the field in order to be able to define and make progress on a project in a relatively short time span, autonomously.

There are only a limited number of participants for the event, roughly 20. Participants will be selected on a first come, first serve basis. There is a 1:1 ratio between instructors and participants.

Participants should definitely start thinking about their project before the school starts. Keep in mind that projects at brainhack do not lead to scientific publications, but to learning new skills. It is important to pick a project that motivates you and will force you to try new tools. Also keep in mind that each project will be fleshed out and evolve during the school, with extensive feedback from all participants. So the initial project idea is just a starting point.

The main difference is the possibility to receive feedback, guidance and help from other brain hackers, both fellow participants and instructors. The BrainHack school also provides a structure, with milestones to be reached over the three weeks. Finally, the brainhack school provides a physical space to work in, servers and data storage, access to public imaging samples, as well as additional facilities (auditorium, 3D printing, visualization station, etc).

The brainhack school is committed to build a safe, positive and supportive environment for everyone, regardless of their ethnicity, gender, sexual and political identities. In particular, participants will be expected to respect our code of conduct.

Given the presence of international residents and non-francophone students, the talks and many of the interactions at the school will happen in English. Many instructors and participants also speak French, as well as several other languages, so some multi-lingual support will be available. We are working on the French version of the website.