Undergraduate Course: Neurobiology of Cognition (BIME10010)
Course Outline
| School | Deanery of Biomedical Sciences |
College | College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Progress in contemporary neuroscience is beginning to give us a handle on the network, cellular and molecular mechanisms that underlie cognition. This elective builds on the foundations laid in Neuroscience 3 (Year 3) and introduces final year undergraduates in neuroscience to a topic that is central to the discipline.
It consists of a mixture of lectures and seminars, led by Prof Richard Morris and Prof Tara Spires-Jones with important contributions from colleagues, including Chancellor's Fellows, senior postdoctoral staff and guest-lecturers. The course will focus on two themes in cognition:
1. Neurobiological basis of normal cognition including: Organisation of memory, synaptic plasticity, memory persistence and forgetting, the role of sleep in cognition, and cognition throughout the life course (development to ageing).
2. Neurobiology underpinning disorders affecting cognition including developmental disorders and neurodegenerative disorders
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| Course description |
Not entered
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Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- research a particular topic in depth and write a detailed essay with diagrams about it.
- develop an understand of what cognition is an how it enables us to understand the wold around us and react appropriately.
- develop an understanding of brain diseases affecting cognition and the progress in the field towards therapeutics.
- develop skills for reading advanced scientific papers in the field, distilling the essence of this work, and presenting it to their student colleagues
- attend and sit an examination covering the range of material of the course.
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Reading List
General textbooks of neuroscience that include neurobiology of cognition and diseases of cognition:
Kandel, ER, Schwartz J and Jessel T (2012) Principles of Neural Science, Elsevier, 5th Edition.
Gazzaniga, M (2009) The Cognitive Neurosciences III MIT Press.
More specialized books that may be useful:
* Anderson P, Morris R, Amaral D, Bliss T and O¿Keefe J (2007). The Hippocampus Book. Oxford Uni. Press.
* Blakemore, S-J and Frith, U. (2005) The Learning Brain: lessons for education. Blackwell Publishing.
* Squire LR et al (2014) Fundamental Neuroscience. Academic Press.
* Duyckaerts C and Litvan I (2008) Handbook of Clinical Neurology vol 89: Dementias. Elsevier (this is available electronically through the library website).
Specific Reading
For each lecture, a one-page handout will give an overview of the content and a list of articles that you may wish to read to get a more detailed understanding of the content. Reading lists are prioritized with the top two on each handout being most relevant/important. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | NoC |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Tara Spires-Jones
Tel: (0131 6)51 1895
Email: Tara.Spires-Jones@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Ms Agnese Lapetrova
Tel: (0131 6)51 5997
Email: Agnese.Lapetrova@ed.ac.uk |
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