Teaching
Psyc108, Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience
Undergraduate Class
Spring 2010
Days/Time: MWF 9:00-9:50am
Location: CENTER 212
This class is highly relevant to students minoring or majoring in psychology; those contemplating careers in psychiatry, neurology or neurosurgery (e.g. pre-med students); and those interested in modeling of brain function or cognition (e.g. students majoring in computer science or cognitive science). It is also a useful course for general science students (e.g. those majoring in biology, chemistry or physics) - providing them with a foundation to interpret the world around them in the everyday news. The class covers basic brain anatomy and modern methods for measuring brain function in humans and non-human animals. It then examines the topics of action, attention, memory, learning, emotion, and language in terms of brain regions and networks. Each class ends with a vignette that helps students to consolidate what they have learned in relation to real-world issues and problems around them: drugs for ADHD; environmental toxins leading to Parkinson's disease; brain-machine prosthetic devices for people who have lost limbs, and how to lay down the best memories.
Psyc272, Circuits for control: the basal ganglia in action and cognition
Graduate Seminar
Winter 2011
Days/Time: TBA
Location: McGill TBA
This seminar treats cognitive control as a set of functions implemented as circuits in the brain. At the center of this are the basal ganglia: the key device for switching and selection of motor, cognitive and affective processing.
Psyc193, Cognitive control and frontal lobe function
Undergraduate Class
Fall 2011
Days/Time: TuTh TBA
Location: TBA
This course explores a rapidly evolving topic in cognitive neuroscience; the most "human" and recently evolved region of the brain -- the frontal lobes. These hold the key to our judgment, our social and ethical behavior, our imagination, indeed, to our "soul." The course provides a background to frontal lobe anatomy and neuroscience methods, along with case histories and descriptions of neuropsychiatric disorders. Students will learn how the frontal lobes enable us to engage in complex mental processes, how vulnerable they are to injury, and how devastating the effects of damage often are -- leading to chaotic, disorganized, asocial, and even criminal behavior.
Psyc272, Impulsivity
Graduate Seminar
Next offered: TBA
Days/Time: TBA
Location: McGill TBA
The concept of impulsivity covers a wide range of "... actions that are poorly conceived, prematurely expressed, unduly risky, or inappropriate to the situation and that often result in undesirable outcomes" [JL Evenden, 1999]. As such it plays an important role in both every day life and mental illness. This seminar will cover the following topics in relation to impulsivity: Varieties of the construct; operationalization via behavioral tasks in non-human animals and humans; translation from genes through phenotypes; neuropsychiatric disorders; neuropharmacology; behavioral treatments; and implications for jurisprudence. Each class will consist in an hour-long lecture from the instructor along with student presentations of a related paper.