Special Topic: Neurobiology of Higher Cognition

This will study how our brain develops and changes over the lifespan and what brain areas contribute to ways that we learn and update information, navigate in our environment, generate goals, make decisions, and produce actions. It will consider how personality, hormones, physiology, and genetics influence the brain. Learn about how brain areas are affected during healthy ageing throughout the lifespan and in some brain disorders that cause cognitive deficits, for example, affective disorders (e.g., schizophrenia) and dementias (e.g., behavioural variant frontotemporal dementias). Throughout the course, students will also reflect on the impact of environmental factors on the brain.