The Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging (formerly F.C. Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging) is one of the four centers which together comprise the Donders

Institute An institute is an organisational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations ( research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countries, institutes ca ...

. It is located at the campus of the

Radboud University Nijmegen Radboud University (abbreviated as RU, nl, Radboud Universiteit , formerly ''Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen'') is a public research university located in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The university bears the name of Saint Radboud, a 9th century ...

and maintains strong ties with the

Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (German: ''Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik''; Dutch: ''Max Planck Instituut voor Psycholinguïstiek'') is a research institute situated on the campus of Radboud University Nijmegen located ...

. It is named after the Dutch ophthalmologist

Franciscus Donders Franciscus (Franz) Cornelius Donders FRS FRSE (27 May 1818 – 24 March 1889) was a Dutch ophthalmologist. During his career, he was a professor of physiology in Utrecht, and was internationally regarded as an authority on eye diseases, dir ...

, who was the first scientist to use differences in reaction times to infer differences in cognitive processing. Research at the centre is focussed around neuroimaging techniques such as MEG,

EEG Electroencephalography (EEG) is a method to record an electrogram of the spontaneous electrical activity of the brain. The biosignals detected by EEG have been shown to represent the postsynaptic potentials of pyramidal neurons in the neocortex ...

and

fMRI Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area ...

. The centre also has an arrangement with Universität Duisburg-Essen to operate a 7T fMRI facility in Essen, at the Kokerei

Zollverein The (), or German Customs Union, was a coalition of German states formed to manage tariffs and economic policies within their territories. Organized by the 1833 treaties, it formally started on 1 January 1834. However, its foundations had b ...

, the site of the former

Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex The Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex (German Zeche Zollverein) is a large former industrial site in the city of Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The first coal mine on the premises was founded in 1847, and mining activities took pla ...

. In order to train young talent in the broad field of

cognitive neuroscience Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific field that is concerned with the study of the biological processes and aspects that underlie cognition, with a specific focus on the neural connections in the brain which are involved in mental process ...

, the Donders Institute has established the Donders Graduate School for Cognitive Neuroscience, which offers students an educational programme at both the Master's and the PhD level. The school is intended for students in biology, physics, psycholinguistics, behavioral studies and medicine who are strongly motivated to do research in cognitive neuroscience. FieldTrip, a

MATLAB MATLAB (an abbreviation of "MATrix LABoratory") is a proprietary multi-paradigm programming language and numeric computing environment developed by MathWorks. MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementa ...

-based toolbox for the analysis of MEG and

data originates at the Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging.

External resources

Official website

FieldTrip

Donders Graduate School for Cognitive Neuroscience
Research institutes in the Netherlands Cognitive science research institutes Radboud University Nijmegen Neuroscience research centers in the Netherlands {{Sci-org-stub