Geospatial Cognition

The study of how people construct mental and emotional states and geographically link these to place and space is of increasing importance to Geographic Information Science (GIScience). A wide range of methods, both quantitative and qualitative, are used alongside sensing technologies to examine, for example, the emotional state and its spatial and temporal variation. GISC489 is a one semester 15-point (0.1250 EFT) course aimed at postgraduate students who are interested in gaining skills in computational neuroscience as it relates to GIScience, applying the latest data science techniques for brain imaging with electroencephalography (EEG). As neuroscience knowledge grows in its scope of societal applications, so does the need to educate a wider audience on how to critically evaluate its research findings. Recent years have seen numerous initiatives to reach a wider university population by making neuroscience more interdisciplinary, integrative, accessible and applicable to students’ lives and intrinsic interests. The focus of the course will be to apply computational neuroscience techniques to the emerging field in GIScience that aims to understand changes within the mind, brain, and body because of navigation in known and unknown environments. The course is interdisciplinary and attempts to clarify mind-brain-body changes across emotional, behavioural, cognitive, and perceptual domains.