PhD in Neuroscience

Broad Neuroscience training: Clinical, methodological and theoretical aspects of translational and cognitive neuroscience (toolbox course)

Broad Neuroscience training: Clinical, methodological and theoretical aspects of translational and cognitive neuroscience (toolbox course)

Academic year 2023/2024

Sommario del corso

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Course objectives

The course will be divided into three parts, each one aimed at providing knowledge of the research methodologies in three different disciplines (Translational Neuroscience, Clinical Neuroscience, Neuropsychology).

The field of translational neuroscience has grown widely during the past 20 years with the concomitant expansion of pre-clinical models with high face-validity. The goal of this module will be to provide overall information on the approaches used to implement therapeutic-directed research, examples of rare genetic diseases successful and less successful stories and the importance of basic science to fostering clinical advances.

Clinical Neuroscience represents a fundamental area of translational neuroscience. The aim of this section of the course is to provide information about ethical, methodological and regulatory aspects of clinical trials conduction.

As far as the neuropsychological field is concerned, the main objectives are to provide a general overview of the specific reference paradigm of neuropsychology, the methods of data collection, the groups of subjects typically studied, and the scientific and clinical effects of the discipline.

Results of learning outcomes

Students attending the Translational Neuroscience course will gain an overall knowledge on the recent history of disease models generation/exploitation and will be able to follow the aims, design and methods of a translational neuroscience article. Concerning Clinical Neuroscience, PhD student will appreciate the complexity of clinical trials design and the methodological evolution of this area, which represents the end point of translational research in Neuroscience.

As for Neuropsychology, students will be able to address both theoretical and practical questions on neuropsychological topics, to understand the aims and experimental design of an article with neuropsychological content and to attend lectures and seminars on the neural bases of cognitive processes

Program

For Translational Neuroscience, several examples of preclinical models will be illustrated from the conceptual hypothesis driving their generation to the methods used for their analyses to the results obtained. The experimental setup such the size of the cohorts of animals analysed, sex, age and cell-specific analyses will be illustrated. An introduction to the use of human iPS Cells will be covered.

For Clinical Neurosciences, historical, regulatory and practical aspect of clinical trials, including their design, will be discussed with examples in the area of neurodegeneration.

For Neuropsychology, the development of the discipline from the beginning to the present day will be discussed in order to illustrate the evolution of the methods used to study the relationship between cognitive processes and their neural bases, from the study of single cases to the study of groups of patients. The selection criteria of the sample to be studied and the pros and cons of the different methodological choices will be illustrated. Some specific examples of experimental studies representing the typical experimental designs of cognitive neuropsychology will also be presented.

Course delivery

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