The Scope of Medical Neuroscience

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來自 Duke University 的課程

Medical Neuroscience

996 個評分

Duke University

Medical Neuroscience

996 個評分

Medical Neuroscience explores the functional organization and neurophysiology of the human central nervous system, while providing a neurobiological framework for understanding human behavior. In this course, you will discover the organization of the neural systems in the brain and spinal cord that mediate sensation, motivate bodily action, and integrate sensorimotor signals with memory, emotion and related faculties of cognition. The overall goal of this course is to provide the foundation for understanding the impairments of sensation, action and cognition that accompany injury, disease or dysfunction in the central nervous system. The course will build upon knowledge acquired through prior studies of cell and molecular biology, general physiology and human anatomy, as we focus primarily on the central nervous system. This online course is designed to include all of the core concepts in neurophysiology and clinical neuroanatomy that would be presented in most first-year neuroscience courses in schools of medicine. However, there are some topics (e.g., biological psychiatry) and several learning experiences (e.g., hands-on brain dissection) that we provide in the corresponding course offered in the Duke University School of Medicine on campus that we are not attempting to reproduce in Medical Neuroscience online. Nevertheless, our aim is to faithfully present in scope and rigor a medical school caliber course experience. This course comprises six units of content organized into 12 weeks, with an additional week for a comprehensive final exam: - Unit 1 Neuroanatomy (weeks 1-2). This unit covers the surface anatomy of the human brain, its internal structure, and the overall organization of sensory and motor systems in the brainstem and spinal cord. - Unit 2 Neural signaling (weeks 3-4). This unit addresses the fundamental mechanisms of neuronal excitability, signal generation and propagation, synaptic transmission, post synaptic mechanisms of signal integration, and neural plasticity. - Unit 3 Sensory systems (weeks 5-7). Here, you will learn the overall organization and function of the sensory systems that contribute to our sense of self relative to the world around us: somatic sensory systems, proprioception, vision, audition, and balance senses. - Unit 4 Motor systems (weeks 8-9). In this unit, we will examine the organization and function of the brain and spinal mechanisms that govern bodily movement. - Unit 5 Brain Development (week 10). Next, we turn our attention to the neurobiological mechanisms for building the nervous system in embryonic development and in early postnatal life; we will also consider how the brain changes across the lifespan. - Unit 6 Cognition (weeks 11-12). The course concludes with a survey of the association systems of the cerebral hemispheres, with an emphasis on cortical networks that integrate perception, memory and emotion in organizing behavior and planning for the future; we will also consider brain systems for maintaining homeostasis and regulating brain state.

從本節課中

Getting Started in Medical Neuroscience

<p>Let's get started in Medical Neuroscience! Each module in Medical Neuroscience will begin with a brief description like this that provides you with an overview of the module. In this first module, you will get to know something about Prof. White and his career in neuroscience; you will understand the scope of Medical Neuroscience, its learning resources, your responsibilities for maximizing your benefit in this course, and you will learn Prof. White's tips on how best to study and learn.</p><p> At the end of this module, please take the ungraded preliminary quiz, "Are you ready for Medical Neuroscience", to self-assess your background knowledge. Your score on this quiz will not count toward your overall score in this course. However, you should be able to pass this quiz (score 70% or better) if you are ready for the academic challenge of this course. Students who are likely to achieve their goals in Medical Neuroscience should be able to successfully answer nearly all of the quiz questions on their first attempt and feel comfortable with assessment questions at this level of knowledge.</p>

Professor White's Career in Neuroscience13:58

The Scope of Medical Neuroscience11:04

Learning resources for Medical Neuroscience32:51

Your Part!13:23

"Neur-run" with Professor White3:45

與講師見面

Leonard E. White, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Neurology, Department of Neurobiology, Duke University School of Medicine; Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences; Director of Education, Duke Institute for Brain Sciences; Duke University

Let's pick up our overview of medical neuroscience by talking about the scope of

the course.

Now the scope of the course is intended to reflect what

we in the field of neuroscience consider to be the core concepts that

every educated person interested in the field of neuroscience should wrestle with.

These core concepts have been defined and articulated by our professional

organization called the Society for Neuroscience.

The Society for Neuroscience has

created one of the very best sources of authoritative information about the brain,

and the field of neuroscience, at a website called BrainFacts.org.

I would encourage you to visit there to complement

your studies with me in medical neuroscience.

These core concepts are beautifully laid out and illustrated on that website, and

you can find them and read a bit more about them there.

But essentially, medical neuroscience will cover these eight core concepts.

First, and perhaps most obvious to those of you who have an interest in the brain,

the brain is indeed the body's most complex organ.

We will study that complexity in various ways and

hopefully, affirm that complexity.

It's interesting to me that in recent years,

the Society of Neuroscience has modified this core concept slightly.

Perhaps, we're being a little bit too parochial in our view of the brain but

we are now asserting that the brain is indeed the most complex structure

in the known universe.

It's quite a challenge we have in front of us then,

to understand this organ, and to wrestle with its complexity.

Of course, we will never in our lifetime fully understand all of its mysteries.

But I hope you'll be incredibly satisfied, and

even captivated by those principles and those organizational features that

we will describe, and that you will learn in your pursuit of medical neuroscience.

The next core concepts maps into our

second unit of knowledge in medical neuroscience and

that is that neurons communicate through both electrical and chemical signals.

We'll spend quite a bit of time talking about the generation of those electrical

signals and how chemical messages mediate communication among neurons.

We will describe the organization of neural circuits and

talk about their genetic determination and you'll see that genetically determined

circuits are indeed the foundation of function in the nervous system.

We'll talk about this wonderfully dynamic

aspect of brain function that we called neuroplasticity.

What we've learned over the course of my career in the field of neuroscience

is that life experience can actually change the very structure and

function of the nervous system.

You'll learn with me some of the principles by which that happens

at the level of synaptic organization and circuit structure.

As we move on to the later stages of the course, particularly in unit five and six,

you'll learn that intelligence arises as the brain reasons,

plans and solves problems.

We will try to unpack for you some of those dimensions of cognition

that are relevant for what we might call broadly intelligence,

recognizing that even that word itself has multiple dimensions to it.

The brain makes it possible to communicate knowledge through language.

As we explore the more complex brain functions in unit six,

we'll spend some time talking about language processing and how the brain is

organized to understand language and to make language in various forms.

The seventh core concept is that the brain itself endows us with

a natural curiosity to understand how the world works.

Now I can't state this core concept without reflecting on a student I had

many, many years ago who came to me one day and said I think we need to give up.

I said, what do you mean we have to give up?

He said, I just don't think that the brain should be allowed to study itself.

The liver doesn't get to do that.

No other organ in the human body gets to do that, so why should the brain?

Of course, he was being facetious but there is a point there.

That the brain itself,

gives us the capacity to ask the kinds of questions that have brought us

together in this global learning community that we call medical neuroscience.

We'll even touch on trying to develop an understanding of where

does that curiosity come from.

And then lastly, we'll talk quite a bit about primary discovery that

have matured the field of neuroscience and expanded its boundaries and

thankfully, discoveries that have begun to have an impact in the real world and

the lives of real individuals.

we will talk about how fundamental discoveries, in and

around the world of neuroscience, promote healthy living, and

new effective treatment for disease and we're just getting started.

I know some of you are here with me because

you are afflicted with such diseases, or your loved ones are addressing them.

I certainly want to be sensitive to those of you that come

with very personal motivations for learning about medical neuroscience.

I hope that you'll engage with us through our discussion forums and

share some of your stories with us as we pursue this particular core concept.

I've said quite a bit about these core concepts and

you'll see them repeatedly throughout our video lessons.

I hope you won't get tired of them.

Because I truly do agree with those academic and thought leaders in

the Society for Neuroscience that consider these to be the essential framework for

all educated persons that are seeking to understand the structure and

function of the human brain.

Now, a bit more about the scope of the course.

This content is organized into 6 Units that will

then unfold over a recommended 12 week course of study.

We'll begin in Unit 1 in the first two weeks and survey the structure of

the nervous system, so we call this aspect of our studies, neuroanatomy.

Unit 2 is concerned with neural signaling and

that includes the generation of electrical signals, the transmission of signals

across synaptic junctions via chemical neurotransmitters and

the plasticity of those connections that come with patterns of use.

So that's Unit 2, and that will occupy your studies in the third and

fourth weeks of the course.

After Unit 2, we pivot to consider what we sometimes talk about as systems

neuroscience, and this includes Unit 3, which is a survey of the sensory systems,

and that will take you from weeks 5-7 in the course.

Unit 4, a series of studies focused on understanding movement and motor control.

That will occupy your life in weeks 8 and 9 of medical neuroscience.

Following the conclusion of those two systems, neuroscience units,

we shift gears a bit, and consider how the brain came to be.

Unit 5 of the course is called The Changing Brain,

which focuses on the development of the brain

from embryogenesis all the way across the life span.

That leads us to the final unit of medical neuroscience, Unit 6,

that will occupy your studies in the 11th and 12th weeks of the course.

Here we'll focus on the more complex aspects of brain function

that pertain to the operation of much of this outer part of the cerebral

hemispheres that we observe from the outside of the brain.

This is the cerebral cortex and specifically the associational

sectors of that cerebral cortex will be front and

center as we consider the most complex aspects of brain function.

Now, this is medical neuroscience and

my goal is to take you through those units of contact with a particular focus.

And that is to understand how this foundational knowledge in neuroscience

relates to an understanding of the impact of neurological injury disease.

One pedagogical method that we will use to address that framework

is to use problem solving through the study of clinical cases.

Here's how I would like that to work for you.

The human brain, the human nervous system, will be at the center of everything we do.

But as we pursue our studies,

we will increasingly begin to introduce the neurological signs and

symptoms that suggest a localized injury in the central nervous system.

We will use this iterative paradigm as a way of first learning the structure and

function of the nervous system so that we can then predict what might go wrong,

given a set of neurological signs and

symptoms that a real person would present with.

As we move towards our final exam in the course, you'll see that we

will increasingly lead with those neurological signs and symptoms.

And see if we can't deduce or

localize a lesion in the central nervous system that would be consistent with what

one would observe clinically through a neurological assessment of a real patient.

This process will unfold, we'll build upon this,

we'll increasingly shift towards clinical case studies as the course progresses.

This is exactly the competency that professionals in the healthcare

environment acquire as they understand the basic framework of the nervous system

that allows them to be informed by what they observed In their patient interviews,

and in their physical assessments of their patients.

Now,that you know more about the scope of medical neuroscience,

I'd like us to now turn our attention towards the resources that available

to you to support your learning.

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