Module Directory

This module will introduce how the human brain and body interact in order to shape our minds and our behaviour. Several different aspects of brain-body-behavioural interactions are covered by different experts in the field.

These topics range from basic bodily functions to high-order existential concerns and include: recreational drugs; lifestyle, diet and well-being; how the microbes in our guts affect behaviour; the role of the immune system; how our environment affects how our genes work; how we taste and smell; how our senses interact to shape perception; the experience of physical and social pain; existential neuroscience.

The aim of this module is:

• To provide Year 3 students with a deep understanding of the way the brain and body interact to control behaviour.

By the end of this module, students will be expected to be able to:

1. Understand the psychophysiological processes and consequences of various lifestyle choices (e.g. diet, exercise, recreational drugs); how embodiment affects brain and behaviour (via the enteric nervous system, the immune system, and gene-environment interactions).


2. Understand how the senses interact to provide the experience of perception.


3. Develop knowledge into the new neuroscientific findings that are providing insight into areas of deep philosophical intrigue (such as the putative link between physical and social pain, and how an awareness of death can influence cognition and behaviour).


4. Know how to pass on their new knowledge to others in an educationally useful way.

Syllabus

• Everyday psychopharmacology.
  This lecture will explain how common (and not so common) recreational drugs affect body, brain and behaviour.


• Effects of lifestyle on brain structure and function I.
  This lecture will provide an introduction into the physiological pathways by which lifestyle choices like sedentary behaviour / physical activity and diet / nutrition affect brain function in the short term, and brain structure in the long term. Specifically, it will examine cortical plasticity and the neuroprotective effects of certain lifestyle choices, and will refer to the role of the hormonal / neurotransmitter systems affected by diet and exercise in everyday cognitive performance, mood and well-being.


• Effects of lifestyle on brain structure and function II.


• Gut, brain, bugs & diet.
  This lecture will introduce the enteric nervous system and look at the interaction between the gut and the brain. It will also delve into the intriguing new research on the microbiome (the bacteria that live in and on the body) and its reciprocal relationship with behaviour.


• The Chemical Senses.
  This lecture is more exciting than it sounds! We explore taste and smell; how they interact and how hidden chemicals (so-called pheromones) may work to influence who we form relationships with.


• Extra senses and multisensory rules.
  In the lecture, human sensory modalities beyond the conventional five are explored: Proprioception, Vestibular sense, thermoception, interoception. Finally, the lecture considers the ‘rules’ of multisensory integration: spatial & temporal limits, inverse effectiveness and superadditivity.


• Development of multisensory processes.
  This lecture will address the question of how we come to be able to use our senses in concert, and illustrate hypotheses about the developmental origins of synaesthesia.


• Social Touch & Development.


• Pain.
  This lecture travels from physical to psychological pain (all the way down from nociceptive sensation and perception of pain to the very inner experience of distress and sufferance with its relative debate on shared neural underpinnings).


• Existential neuroscience.
  Introduces first the anthropological and then the psychological work that revolves around understanding how and why the awareness of death profoundly influences human cognition and behaviour. It will then deepen to the on-going theoretical debates and show how neuroscience studies may help telling apart the questions that have absorbed scholars for the previous century. The lecture will dovetail most recent experimental findings in the field and discuss them according to a biologically grounded model of existential anxiety.

This module will be delivered via:

• One 2-hour lecture per week (each with a 10 minute break in the middle).
• Two or three 2-hour seminar sessions related to the oral presentations.
• One 2-hour seminar on how to develop learning materials.

The first seminar will be a drop-in session for people seeking help and guidance with their presentation. The other 1 or 2 will be the sessions for the actual oral presentations. (The number of these sessions will depend on the number of students opting to take this module).