Please note: Provisional description
Admission requirements
Successful completion of How To Write A Research Proposal is helpful.
The course will be given at first year Master level. An introductory seminar will review both level and course content at the start of the course.
Description
Period: Sept 26 – Oct 21, 2011
This advanced course combines clinical aspects with fundamental issues in neurobiology, pathogenesis and treatment of stress-related brain diseases.
The course is a ‘joint venture’ of the departments of Psychiatry and Medical Pharmacology.
Specific topics are:
Patient demonstration and clinical phenotyping, symptoms and diagnosis of depression and anxiety.
Pharmacology of depression and anxiety: efficacy and new drug development.
Epidemiology, genetics and etiology of depression and anxiety.
Other stress-related syndromes (e.g. anorexia nervosa, post traumatic stress disorder, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome).
Pathogenesis, molecular mechanisms and novel drug targets.
Theoretical and practical experience in stress and depression research in the departments of psychiatry and medical pharmacology (expert meetings).
Assignments to explore dedicated topics in the form of critical evaluations, research proposals and literature reviews.
The student will report the results in a research proposal and in an oral presentation.
This course will particularly work on:
Research competences:
Defining a research question, writing a research proposal, integrate different biomedical disciplines.
Professional competences:
Commitment, digesting other people’s opinions.
Course objectives
The student has a good understanding into:
main issues and methodology in the study of depression and other stress system disorders.
proposed theories and current scientific questions and how to evaluate them critically.
the student can convey this knowledge and its discrepancies in views to the other students.
finally, students have to implement this knowledge into short reviews and in a research proposal which (s)he will also present orally.
Mode of instruction
Interactive lectures, patient demonstrations, work groups, active participation in symposium.
Assessment method
Marking of individual morning and afternoon-summaries of the day; research proposal; and oral presentation.