Prosem (Part 2) syllabus 1Biobehavioral Prosem, Part 2: Behavioral Neuroscience (PSYC 303) Fall 2010 Professor: Donna Toufexis Dewey Hall 302 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 five 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 Attending each class (or having a very good excuse) and handing in all written assignments.Prosem (Part 2) syllabus 2 Grading Class participation (20% of your grade) and writing assignments for each week (80% of your grade) for this portion of the course. 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. Week 1-October 27th (I will be away) BUT an introductory movie on psychopathologies related to behavioral neuroscience will be shown. Assignment: Pick a psychopathology that interested you. What questions (at least 2) do you think are important to address in order to understand that particular psychopathology? We will discuss these next class(Nov 3th). This is to be handed in at the end of the class. Week 2 – November 3 2010 Discuss goals and requirements of this portion of the course Basic neurobiology Discussion of last week’s assignment Handout of papers on ‘translational research’. Handouts for next week - 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. Assignment: Pick a translational research topic. What specific aims (at least 2) would you pick in order to do this research? We will discuss these next class (Nov 10th). These are to be handed in at the end of the class. Week 3 –Translational Research and Animal Models (Nov 10) Lecture: Animal models for behavioral neuroscience: Are they translational?Prosem (Part 2) syllabus 3 Discussion of ‘Specific Aims’ Assignment: expanding this topic: 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 are reading. Write a one page summary of the paper to be handed in. Be prepared to discuss why you consider the topic of your chosen paper “translational” in next class December 1st Hand outs ● 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. Hand outs to help with December 1st lecture. Please read before class: LeDoux, J. E. (2000). Emotion circuits in the brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 23, 155-184. Maren, S. (2008). Pavlovian fear conditioning as a behavioral assay for hippocampus and amygdala function: Cautions and caveats. European Journal of Neuroscience, 28, 1661-1666. Walker, D. L., & Davis, M. (2008). Role of the extended amygdala in short-duration versus sustained fear: A tribute to Dr. Lennart Heimer. Brain Structure and Function, 213, 29-42. Delgado, M. R., Olsson, A., & Phelps, E. A. (2006). Extending animal models of fear conditioning to humans. Biological Psychology, 73, 39-48. No class NOVEMBER 17th Society for Neuroscience Convention No class NOVEMBER 24th THANKSGIVING Week 4 – Neural Circuits, Physiology and Neurochemistry of Fear and Anxiety (Dec 1) Lecture: fear and anxiety and the brain Discussion on ‘translational’ papers Assignment: Find a paper that examines sex differences in behavioral neuroscience or psychopathology. Write a one page summary on the paper that you picked to be handed in. Be prepared to discuss your chosen paper in the next class December 8th .Prosem (Part 2) syllabus 4Handouts to read before final class: Rosenzweig, M. R. (1996). Aspects of the search for neural mechanisms of memory. Annual Review of Psychology, 47, 1-32. Kleim, J. A., & Jones, T. A. (2008). Principles of experience-dependent neural plasticity: Implications for rehabilitation after brain damage. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 51, S225-S239. Hillman, C. H., Erickson, K. I., & Kramer, A. F. (2008).