NSCI 425: Topics in Neuroscience

NSCI 425: Topics in Neuroscience

Department of Neuroscience

Georgetown University

Fall 2019, Fall 2020

Role: Course Director

Along with other course directors, I designed and updated an existing course to explore fundamental neuroscience. Together, the director(s) selected a rotating selection of specific psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders, and structured modules to bridge cellular mechanisms and pharmacological lessons with complex behavioral and cognitive outcomes. Additionally, directors balanced the syllabus with expert lectures, student-led journal club presentations, and literature analysis. This course was entirely graduate student led.

Course description: "This course uses an interdisciplinary approach to study brain function through dysfunction. It covers basic concepts in Neuroscience, ranging from cellular and molecular underpinnings to structural and functional differences observed in various brain-based diseases and disorders. These concepts build to an understanding of pathology as well as points of intervention. Special emphasis is placed on (1) bridging basic neural mechanisms (neurotransmitters, circuits, systems) and higher brain processes (emotion, cognition, memory) and (2) understanding the methods of research and assessment crucial to studying brain dysfunction and disorder. The course will involve lectures, student presentations, and discussion of primary literature. Specific disorders and topics vary semester to semester; but course modules focus on core neuroscience principles and concepts, behavioral and psychiatric disorders (drug abuse, schizophrenia, obesity), and neural injury and neurodegenerative disorders (traumatic brain injury, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s). Prerequisites: Introductory biology, a neuroscience course, or permission of the instructor."