New course offered in Neuroscience at Danish Instiitute for Study Abroad (Copenhagen)

Humans share similar brain structures, controlling the fear response, with mammals, birds and reptiles. These structures are evolutionally preserved because fear helps protect us from danger, injury and death. Now, we live removed from the dangerous elements of nature, but our primal fear instincts remain. Do emotions have a function in our consciousness today or are they merely intrusions from another time?

We will examine the evolutionary aspects of the fear response, how it ties into decision-making and our everyday lives. We will examine this issue from a multidisciplinary perspective, synthesizing recent work from the fields of biology, psychology, neuroscience and philosophy. Labs will explore differences in implicit responses between American and Danish students

3 credits

Instructor: This course will be taught alternately by St. Lawrence University faculty members: Joe Erlichman, Ana Estevez, Bill DeCoteau and Jay Leiter (a faculty member at Dartmouth Medical School).

Prerequisites: 1 year of college level biology or psychology

Text: The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life by Joseph E. LeDoux, various primary litterature

Objectives:

Upon completion of the course students will be able to:

• Explain the function of the brain, from nuclei to neurons, especially the fear circuit

• Explain the psychological and physiological effects of fear

• Describe the concepts of the consciousness/unconsciousness and attention

• Discuss the concepts and basis of perceptions and emotions

• Analyze how fear is a component of several mental disorders

Topics covered:

• Cellular elements involved in brain function: neurons and their connections and signals

• Study of emotions from a historical perspective

• Organization of the brain and peripheral nervous system

• Nuclei and pathways

• Reflexes and simple circuits

• Conditioned fear responses and the development of ‘learned triggers’ and contextual cues

• Fear conditioning and the study of emotions

• Perception of fear (historical overview of philosophical positions, the qualia problem, the concept of representation)

• The auditory circuit, the amygdala and the fear conditioning paradigm

This course counts for credit in Neuroscience or Biology