Our Amazing Brain

This course will introduce students to the science behind how a human brain functions and produces behaviors. This amazing organ is composed of billions of neurons that form trillions of connections with each other. These neurons allow us to sense and perceive the world around us, integrate new experiences with old ones, form thoughts and actions, and develop consciousness and personality. In this course, students will discover how brain dysfunction is the root cause of many illnesses, including addiction, schizophrenia, depression, cancer, stroke, and Alzheimer's disease. Students will also have the opportunity to work with preserved brains. No prior experience with science is required to succeed in this course.

Bio Inq: Deadly Shape Hostage Brain

Age-related neurological diseases that hold our brain hostage are major 21st-century global health burdens and are among the most actively funded areas of medical research. In this course, students will delve into primary literature through research projects that investigate how deadly protein shapes underlie complex neurodegenerative illnesses, like Alzheimer's, Huntington disease, and Parkinson disease and discover how little we still know, despite astonishing advances. Students will dissect human brains to understand the underlying brain pathology. Trips to Chicago to visit neurology laboratories, neuroscience research centers, and attend a major neuroscience conference will present the latest advances in neurological research. Additionally, students will debate ethical dilemmas that face society as neuroscientists race towards solving current medical mysteries and experiment with potential new treatments. Two discussion/lecture and two laboratory hours per week.

Music and the Mind

In this course, we wrestle with fundamental questions regarding music and the human experience. Why does music exist? How did it evolve in the human species? What, exactly, does it do to us, as listeners and as practitioners? How does music change our brains? Is there really such a thing as a "Mozart Effect?" What new promises are there for therapeutic uses for music? Music's presence in the human species is clearly puzzling. While many scholars have speculated a reason for its existence, there is no definitive answer as to why we make music. Nevertheless, we do make music. There is not a single human culture on Earth that has no music. Some of the books we will be reading include Musicophilia, The Singing Neanderthals, and This is Your Brain on Music. Note that this is a course that requires students to give oral presentations.