Syllabus:
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 far from trivial. In this course, we will present basic concepts on multiple levels of nervous system organization and function and discuss how they are connected to each other.
Lecture 1: Evolution of the brain and animal behavior: innate versus adaptive behavior
Lecture 2: Neurogenetics - the hereditary basis of behavioral traits
Lecture 3: Transcriptional regulation in neurons
Lecture 4: Cell biology of neurons I: basic shared features
Lecture 5: Cell biology of neurons II: cellular diversity (morphology, synaptic transmission, short-term plasticity)
Lecture 6: Neural circuits I - Assembly
Lecture 7: C.elegans as a model system for molecular and systems neuroscience
Lecture 8: Neural circuits II - From microcirucit function to mesoscale
Lecture 9: Epigenetics and transgenerational inheritance of behavioral traits
Lecture 10: Experience-dependent plasticity I: Different forms of plasticity
Lecture 11: Experience-dependent plasticity II: Learning & memory
Lecture 12: Student seminars on pre-assigned papers.
Lecture 13: Student seminars on pre-assigned papers.