Prosem (Part 2) syllabus 1Biobehavioral Prosem, Part 2: Behavioral Neuroscience (PSYC 303) Fall 2009 Professor: John Green Dewey Hall 358 E-mail: [email protected] Office hours: By appointment Meeting Time & Location: Dewey Hall 100 Wednesdays (October 21 – December 9), 9:30 am-12:15 pm Course Description Biobehavioral Prosem is designed to be an advanced survey and analysis of behavioral and biological psychology, with special emphasis on learning theory (Part 1) and behavioral neuroscience (Part 2). Behavioral neuroscience can be defined as “the study of how neural systems work together to produce behavior”. Some people use the term “behavioral neuroscience” to refer to the study of nervous system-behavior relations in non-human animals and “cognitive neuroscience” to refer to the study of nervous system-cognition-behavior relations in humans (and perhaps other primates). These are very loose distinctions and not universally agreed upon but you should be aware of them. In this part of Prosem, we will focus mostly on rodent work because rats and mice are the most commonly used species to study nervous system-behavior relations and because these are the two species that UVM biobehavioral psychologists use. Course Objectives You should leave this course with a basic understanding of research in behavioral neuroscience. By the end of this portion of Prosem, everyone should have some working knowledge of some of the approaches and questions in behavioral neuroscience. While it’s impossible to give you a full overview of behavioral neuroscience in only six weeks, you should get enough of an overview to support further exploration of these topics in our Biobehavioral seminars. It is also hoped that the topics we discuss will give you “food for thought” for how behavioral neuroscience-related approaches might contribute to your own area(s) of research interest. Course Structure Most meetings will be a mixture of lecture and discussion. Generally, I will lecture for about the first half of class. At this point, we’ll take a short break and then come back and spend the rest of class discussing the readings. Course Requirements At the end of each week’s meeting, I will pass out one or more thought questions for the next meeting. These are designed to get you thinking about the readings for that week.Prosem (Part 2) syllabus 2Due by Friday, October 30 will be a two-sentence description of your “mini-grant application” topic. I will give you feedback on this by the Weds, November 4 class so you’ll have time to incorporate this feedback into the initial draft of your Specific Aims (due Weds, November 11). I can be flexible on the topic you choose so that you can try to relate it to your own area(s) of research interest but it must incorporate some aspect of behavioral or cognitive neuroscience (e.g., animal models, imaging) and be translational in nature (e.g., one possibility is to include an animal model and human clinical component; another possibility is to include an imaging component to elucidate mechanisms and a component to translate these findings to people in an institutional or community setting of some sort). You are free to base your topic on one or more of the course readings listed below. Due in the Nov. 11 class will be a 1 page draft of your Specific Aims. Format should be: 1” margins all around, 11 pt Arial font, single line spacing. This will likely start with a brief background and significance for human health, a short description of what you propose to study and why, and then 2-4 aims. I will give you feedback on this by our Nov. 18 class so that you have plenty of time to work on your final paper. Due by Friday, December 11 will be a 5 page “mini-grant application” on “Translational Research” (1” margins all around, 11 pt Arial font, single line spacing) in the form of Specific Aims (1 page) and Background & Significance (4 pages) for an NIH grant application. This paper will consist of your final Specific Aims (revised to take into account any feedback I give you) and a Background & Significance. Because this is a mock NIH grant, be sure that the significance for human health is clear. Grading Two sentence description of mini-grant topic – 10% (Due Friday, October 30) One-page draft of specific aims – 25% (Due Wednesday, November 11) Five-page mini-grant (specific aims; background & significance) – 65% (Due Friday, December 11) Course Outline NOTE: the articles should be read in the order specified for the optimal learning experience! Readings will be available on the Blackboard course site and by the Psych 1 office. Week 1 – Introduction (Oct 21) Go over syllabus and discuss goals and requirements of this portion of the courseProsem (Part 2) syllabus 3 Handouts: - Woolf (2008). The meaning of translational research and why it matters. Journal of the American Medical Association, 299, 211-213. - Insel (2006). Translational research in the decade of discovery. Hormones and Behavior, 50, 504-505. - Example Specific Aims & Background/Significance - Grading Rubric for Final Paper - “Barry Connors Grantisms” Week 2 – NIH Grant Writing (Oct 28) Lecture and discussion on writing, submitting, and receiving reviews for a National Institutes of Health grant Week 3 –Translational Research and Animal Models (Nov 4) Find an empirical paper from the recent literature (last 5 years or so) that you would consider “translational”. Choose something not related to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) since those are topics of the two reviews we’ll read. Be prepared to discuss why you consider the topic of your chosen paper “translational”. Yehuda, R., & LeDoux, J. E. (2007). Response variation following trauma: A translational neuroscience approach to understanding PTSD. Neuron, 56, 19-32. Sagvolden, T., Russell, V. A., Aase, H., Johansen, E. B., & Farshbaf, M. (2005). Rodent models of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Biological Psychiatry, 57, 1239-1247. Week 4 -- Overview of Basic Neuroscience (Nov 11) Breedlove, S. M., Rosenzweig, M. R., & Watson, N. V. (2007). Biological Psychology: An Introduction to Behavioral, Cognitive, and Clinical Neuroscience. **Read all of Chapters 2 and 3 (pp. 23-87) Week 5 – A Neural Circuit Analysis of Behavior: Pavlovian