Workings of the Human Brain (BIOS 14107) Course Director: Avertano Noronha MD Register: The Office of the University Registrar This course was designed to give our College students from diverse disciplines an overview of the many functions of the Brain including perception, movement, language, emotion, memory, sleep and cognition. The course is titled after a book by the Nobel Laureate, Sir John Eccles. A review of historical milestones in neuroscience is followed by a basic review of neuroanatomy, neurophysiology and neurotransmitter systems. The course then moves to a model of disease or dysfunction in an area of the Brain to understand its normal function; examples include the behavioral change in Phineas Gage that followed injury to the frontal lobes, movement disorders such as Parkinsons’s disease from loss of dopaminergic neurons, memory impairment from lesions in the hippocampus and the REM sleep disorder, narcolepsy. An important requirement of the course is to submit a paper; students describe what motivated them to take this course, choose a topic of interest and review the literature to provide the biological background for the paper and in the final paragraph propose projects that would advance research in the field. The papers submitted reflect the disciplines that the students intend to pursue from computational neuroscience to psychology to art and philosophy of mind. This exercise introduces students to the scientific method of reviewing data and weaving the elements learned from this course into a cohesive paper.

Department of Neurology, The University of Chicago Medical Center
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