EEG for Beginners GitHub

Resource library

Everything the modules point at, plus the next layer down, grouped by type. All free and open without a login unless marked.

Everything the modules point at, plus the next layer down. All free and open without a login unless marked. "Time" is how long the useful part takes, not the whole thing. You do not need to finish every resource: the schedule says what to read, watch or run, and this page is the longer menu for when you want more.

Videos #

Resource Time Use it for Modules
2-Minute Neuroscience: EEG 2 min Day-one orientation 01
Mike X Cohen, ANTS lecture playlist 30 min each Intro to EEG time series, filtering, static spectral analysis; the go-to for understanding why the math works. Cohen is the clearest explainer of why EEG looks the way it does 01, 07, 10
FieldTrip video lectures (Donders) 30-60 min each Robert Oostenveld's "Introduction to EEG, MEG and analysis", Julian Keil's six-part "EEG Data Analysis" basics series, frequency analysis 01, 05
Online EEGLAB Workshop (UCSD) 15-40 min each Preprocessing, ICA, "Removing Artifactual Components" (Delorme); EEGLAB is MATLAB but the concepts transfer 05, 09
Neural Data Science in Python videos (Newman) varies Video companion to the textbook below 06

Decks and courses #

Resource Time Use it for Modules
PURSUE EEG/ERP teaching modules (University of Richmond) 45 min for Module 1 The best plain-language intro deck: what EEG measures, how it compares to fMRI and MEG, strengths and limits. Later modules cover recording, artifacts and ERP analysis 01, 03
SPM for EEG/MEG course materials (UCL) Optional A second set of intro decks on preprocessing and source analysis —
Neural Data Science in Python (Newman, Dalhousie) 2-4 h for the EEG chapter Free online textbook with notebooks; a slower, more complete path through MNE, starting from zero Python 06, 12
Python for the practicing neuroscientist (Kramer and Eden) 1-2 h per notebook Case-study notebooks; spectral analysis of EEG rhythms (notebooks 3-4) from first principles 10
Introduction to ERPs (Luck and Kappenman, ERP Boot Camp) 3-5 h Only if your project needs event-related analysis; free, but it needs an account on their course site 11
10-20 system (EEG), Wikipedia 15 min Electrode names and positions 03

Hands-on documentation #

Resource Time Use it for Modules
MNE-Python install guide 15 min Fresh virtual environment plus pip install mne matplotlib jupyter 06
MNE-Python tutorials 20-40 min each The spine of the hands-on sessions; ordered so a new user can go top to bottom all labs
MNE: Overview of MEG/EEG analysis 20 min One dataset from raw file to plot 06
MNE: Filtering and resampling 30 min What filters do and what they cost 07
MNE: Setting the EEG reference 20 min Average, linked mastoid, single-channel references 08
MNE: Preprocessing overview 20 min Survey of artifact types and tools 09
MNE: Repairing artifacts with ICA 40 min The ICA workflow end to end 09, 12
MNE: The Spectrum class 20 min compute_psd, Welch, band power 10
MNE: Epochs overview 30 min Cutting continuous data around events 11
EEGLAB quick tutorial on ICA rejection 20 min Recognising and rejecting artifact components 09
EEGLAB tutorial outline Reference The canonical step list for single-subject EEG processing 09
Python EEG Handbook (Lu et al.) Reference A standardised single-subject preprocessing recipe in MNE to compare your pipeline against 12

Libraries #

Resource Time Use it for Modules
MNE-Python — The standard open-source EEG/MEG library in Python; used in every lab all
mne-icalabel 15 min Auto-labels ICA components as brain, eye, muscle, heart, line noise 09
clean_rawdata 30 min EEGLAB plugin; its README explains how ASR works 09
mne-denoise ASR 30 min A Python implementation of ASR to experiment with 09
NeuroKit2 30 min ECG/PPG processing and the full set of HRV metrics in a few lines; includes an HRV tutorial 14
MNE-BIDS 20 min Reading and writing BIDS-formatted datasets, such as those on OpenNeuro —
specparam (formerly FOOOF) 30 min Separates the 1/f background of a spectrum from oscillatory peaks; a better way to measure an alpha peak than raw band power 10
BrainFlow 30 min Device-agnostic streaming from consumer EEG hardware; useful for real-time experiments 13
Lab Streaming Layer (LSL) 30 min The common protocol for streaming and synchronising EEG, markers and other signals in real time 13
Squiggly 20 min Alex's open-source 19-channel EEG assessment tool; its README maps out a full qEEG analysis 15

Papers #

Resource Time Use it for Modules
Enriquez-Geppert, Huster and Herrmann (2017), EEG-Neurofeedback as a Tool to Modulate Cognition and Behavior: A Review Tutorial 60 min How a neurofeedback study and system are built, step by step; Figure 2 is the whole field on one page 13
Shaffer and Ginsberg (2017), An Overview of Heart Rate Variability Metrics and Norms 45 min HRV metrics, what they mean, and published norms 14

Datasets #

Resource Size Use it for
Course sample recordings 13 EDF files, 17 MB Every figure and lab in this course; anonymised real recordings chosen to show specific signals and artifacts
PhysioNet EEG Motor Movement/Imagery 109 subjects, 64 ch, 160 Hz Loads directly through mne.datasets.eegbci; runs 1 and 2 are one-minute eyes-open and eyes-closed baselines
OpenNeuro Hundreds of datasets BIDS-formatted EEG datasets, no registration; resting-state sets are useful for band-power practice
PhysioNet Large Many physiological datasets beyond EEG, including ECG collections for HRV practice

Open-source projects #

EEG 101 itself is retired: NeuroTechX archived the app in 2021 after InterAxon closed the Muse SDK, and its README now points to EEGEdu as the successor. Everything below is open source or openly licensed, and nothing here asks for an account; where a site has a request form for part of its material, the table says so. The open-source projects page has a "try it in 10 minutes" step for each.

Project or deck What it is Login? Why it is on this map
EEG 101 (NeuroTechX) Archived interactive Android tutorial (React Native + Java) that walked a Muse wearer through EEG neurophysiology, hardware, filtering, spectra, and a simple BCI classifier No The source is still readable: the tutorial text in src is a well-paced five-screen intro, and the signal classes show real-time filtering and plotting in a mobile app. Useful reference for the game-design team
EEGEdu (Mathewson lab, University of Alberta) Browser-based successor to EEG 101: interactive modules on raw signal, filtering, spectra, bands, and evoked responses, streaming live from a Muse over Web Bluetooth. MIT licence, used in a 100-student undergraduate course No If a Muse 2 or Muse S is available, this is the fastest hands-on orientation there is; no install, just a browser
EEG-ExPy (formerly eeg-notebooks, NeuroTechX) Python library of classic EEG experiments (visual N170, P300, SSVEP, alpha) built on BrainFlow, PsychoPy and MNE, with documentation and bundled example datasets No The analysis notebooks run on the bundled data without any hardware, so you can see a full experiment-to-plot pipeline in MNE; maintained from Toronto (John Griffiths, U of T)
BrainFlow Open-source SDK that streams from OpenBCI, Muse, BrainBit, Callibri, Unicorn and many other boards through one API, with Python, Node, Java and more bindings, plus a synthetic board and a playback-file board No The device layer under most open EEG tooling; the synthetic and playback boards let you test a real-time pipeline with no headset. Several of the boards it supports are ones Divergence integrates
Introduction to Modern BCI Design (Christian Kothe, SCCN/UCSD) Ten recorded lectures with downloadable slide PDFs: EEG basics, signal processing in BCIs, ERP processing, oscillatory processes, machine learning, plus Lab Streaming Layer and BCILAB tutorials No The best open deck set on EEG basics and signal processing for engineers. Kothe is the author of ASR, so his lectures are also background reading for the de-noising project
NeuroTechX awesome-bci Curated list of open-source software, hardware, datasets, courses and communities No The index to go to when this map runs out
NeuroTechEDU lessons (NeuroTechX) Free written lessons on EEG, BCI and neurotech basics No Short written primers; community-maintained, so expect a few stale links
OpenBCI docs: EEG setup Electrode wiring, reference and bias, 10-20 placement, and a walk-through of recording your own alpha waves No The most practical "what is a reference electrode" page on the web, and the whole docs site is MIT licensed
Brainstorm introduction tutorials (USC and McGill) Free GUI application for MEG/EEG analysis; a compiled version runs without a MATLAB licence; step-by-step intro tutorials on a provided dataset, plus an EEG-specific tutorial No A no-code way to see filtering, artifact rejection, spectra and source maps before writing any Python
PURSUE course modules (University of Richmond) Thirteen-module undergraduate EEG/ERP course, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Decks on the module pages; data-processing labs and ERP datasets by request form Already the Week 1 deck; the full module list covers signal generation, recording procedure, and processing labs
Introductory Neuroscience and Neuro-Instrumentation (NPTEL, IISc Bangalore) University lecture series; weeks 2-4 cover EEG recording systems, waveforms, and signal conditioning, with EEGLAB demos No for the YouTube lectures; free enrolment only if you want certification An engineering-flavoured alternative to the psychology-flavoured decks above

Already in the library and also login-free: MNE tutorials, the FieldTrip and EEGLAB workshop videos, the EEGLAB wiki, Neural Data Science in Python, the Python EEG Handbook, and all the open-access papers.

Paid options exist (Cohen's Udemy courses, a few EEG intro courses on Udemy, the live SPM and ERP Boot Camp workshops, and Cohen's book Analyzing Neural Time Series Data, MIT Press, 2014, which is the long form of the ANTS lectures), but nothing in this course depends on them.