This course will elevate your AI proficiency, preparing you to actively engage in the digital evolution of healthcare. It offers a comprehensive perspective on the healthcare shift, steered by medical necessities, and bolstered by innovative artificial intelligence solutions.

Topics covered include:

• Basic fluorescence microscopy
• Fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM), 2P excitation
• Fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET)
• Stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (d-STORM)
• 3D-Electron microscopy, focused-ion beam (FIB) milling and scanning EM, specimen preparation and embedding.

We will investigate mainly fish brains, but also some invertebrate model systems to get on overview of the major differences in neuronal organization between them. Sensory and motor pathways will be compared and pathways will be traced from primary sensory centres through higher integrative centres to motor command areas.

Topic 1: Pharmacologically relevant signalling pathways
Topic 2: Drugs for the treatment of pain: local anaesthetics, opioids
Topic 3: Drugs influencing vigilance: hypnotics, general anaesthetics
Topic 4: Treatment of psychiatric diseases: antipsychotics, antidepressants
Topic 5: Drugs of abuse: opioids, cannabinoids
Topic 6: Neurodegenerative disorders
Methods 1: Drug mechanisms and signalling in neurons
Methods 2: Modulation of neurotransmitter release in brain slices
Methods 3: Standard behavioural tests in drug development - pharmaceutical industry
Methods 4: Development of innovative drugs – gene and cell therapies
Methods 5: Regulatory Affairs

Methodology and Theory of Cognitive Neuroscience:

• Psychology: what makes it a science?
• Experimental strategies: psychophysiology, neuropsychology
• Philosophical implications of cognitive neurosciences

Cognitive Neuroscience: main findings on brain-function relationships

Clinical Neurophysiology and Imaging:

• Electroencephalography (EEG) as a neurodiagnostic tool
• Advanced methods of EEG analysis: coherence, fast Fourier, non-linear and other analysis
• Structural and functional brain imaging as neurodiagnostic tools

Experimental Psychophysiology:

• Electrophysiology: event-related potentials, non-invasive and invasive
• Magnetic resonance tomography: functional neuroimaging (fMRI)

Clinical Neuropsychology:

• Neuropsychological assessment
• Cortical electrostimulation
• WADA test

6. Experimental Neuropsychology

• Animal models of behavioural deficits in epilepsy

This course will focus on behavioural, psychological, neurobiological, and neuropsychological processes underlying the acquisition of new knowledge and its subsequent consolidation and retrieval in human animals. Where possible, attempts will be made to integrate these levels in a multidisciplinary framework. Additionally, the application of learning and memory paradigms in clinical and cognitive research will be discussed. 

This course will provide students with a thorough background in the newly emergent field of social cognitive neuroscience. A broad range of social phenomena will be examined at multiple levels (1) the social level including experience and behaviors (2) the cognitive level which deals with information processing systems and (3) the neural level which deals with brain/neuronal bases of the first two levels.