Neurobiology of Higher Cognition

We 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. We will consider how personality, hormones, physiology, and genetics influence these processes. We will learn how brain areas are affected during healthy ageing throughout the lifespan and in brain disorders that cause cognitive deficits, for example, dementias (e.g., behavioural variant frontotemporal dementias) and affective disorders (e.g., schizophrenia). Genetics, and environmental and lifestyle factors influence how the brain develops, functions and changes over the life, which in turn leads to consideration of matauranga Maori. Throughout the course, students will also reflect on the impact of environmental factors on brain health. Additionally, students will learn about the regulations governing welfare and ethics when working with humans and animal models in neuroscience, incorporating bicultural perspectives in this topic and considering these perspectives in their human and ethics assignment.