Establishing a causal relationship between an animal’s genetic make-up and its behavior is one of the foremost challenges in neuroscience: while it seems clear that certain normal and pathological behavioral traits have a genetic basis, bridging the gaps between genes, neurons, circuits and behavior encompasses nearly all disciplines of neuroscience and is thus far from trivial. In this course, we will present basic concepts on multiple levels of nervous system organization & function and discuss how they are connected to and affect each other.
The syllabus will include the following topics:
- Evolution of the brain and animal behavior: innate versus adaptive behavior
- Neurogenetics - the hereditary basis of behavioral traits
- Genomic & transcriptional regulation in neurons
- Epigenetics and transgenerational inheritance of behavioral traits
- Cell biology of neurons: cellular diversity
- Neural circuits: assembly, from micro- to meso-scale circuit function
- Experience-dependent plasticity: Different forms of cellular and circuit plasticity, learning & memory
- C.elegans as a model system for molecular and systems neuroscience
- From genes to sexual behavior