Brain & Behaviour 2 - PSY00023I
Module will run
| Occurrence | Teaching period |
|---|---|
| A | Semester 1 2026-27 |
Module aims
Block 1 will explore how the brain makes the body move, and how neurological processes come together to guide our decision making. Students will learn the neurology behind movement, the key systems involved, and what happens when parts of these systems are damaged (for example in Parkinson’s Disease or following a stroke). Students will also learn about the concept of rationality in decision making, such as how and why flaws can arise in our reasoning, as well as understanding how decisions are made in different contexts.
Students will develop an understanding of the neurobiological processes that support different aspects of memory, including processes at the cellular level, systems level neuroscience and neuropsychological studies of amnesia. The aim of this block is to examine how we can use neuroscience to better understand the biological basis of mental illnesses and how damage to certain brain regions gives rise to specific deficits in perception, attention, and memory.
Block 4 aims to introduce students to the concept of interoception (signals arising from within the body) and demonstrate relevant neuroanatomical pathways. Students will also learn how interoception is measured, how it is represented in the brain, and its influence on perception, emotion, behaviour, and sense of self. The block also aims to introduce students to predictive coding as a framework for understanding how bodily experience is constructed, and will demonstrate to students how interoception may contribute to maladaptive behaviours and altered bodily experience in panic disorder and anorexia nervosa.
The aim of the Skills Weeks is to introduce students to more complex experimental design methods, including placebo effects.
Module learning outcomes
- To describe the neurobiological structures and processes critical for different aspects of memory and how they account for the deficits in patients with amnesia.
- Identify how interception is associated with emotion and behaviour.
- Describe how the brain structures associated with mental illnesses (e.g. depression, pain and PTSD) differ in patients and healthy controls.
- Demonstrate how a neuropsychologist diagnoses a patient with focal brain damage to the parietal lobe.
- To explore and understand how predictive processes in the brain can underly our experience of our own body and the world around us
- To review and appraise the various factors that underlie human decision making.
- To understand the constraints on human decision making, and why our choices are not always strictly rational.
- To demonstrate understanding of key components and core concepts that underlie good experimental design and some of the ways that these can be applied in mental health research.
Module content
The first part of this course is concerned with the ability of humans to make individual movements, control them, and plan the complex sequences involved in actions. We will cover things such as manual dexterity and the learning of motor skills. The module will also cover how we make executive decisions regarding which actions to take, and the important links between motor function and cognition. We will cover different models of decision making that attempt to explain human choices in different social and economic contexts. In doing so, we will also see how human decisions can be fallible and flawed under certain circumstances.
The second part of the course will cover how neuroscience is used to better understand the biological basis of mental illnesses and brain damage. It will cover topics such as the Clinical Neuroscience of Depression and PTSD and the impact of brain injury in development.
The next section of the course will begin with an overview of the brain systems that support memory, focusing on the hippocampus (a structure within the medial temporal lobe) which is crucial for remembering events that have happened. We will look at the consequences of damage to the hippocampus (amnesia) and the cellular mechanisms underlying learning and memory. We will review evidence showing that not all aspects of memory are affected by amnesia, suggesting "fractionation" of the human memory system. In later lectures, we will consider how information is stored in a different form within the neocortex, and discuss the contribution of frontal and parietal systems to memory retrieval.
The last section of the module will examine the role of interoception in the sense of self, emotion and clinical disorders, and the neural anatomical pathways involved. It will cover how we use signals originating from within the body (interoceptive signals) to let us know about the physiological state of the body, such as when we are hungry, thirsty or cold as well as emotions such as fear and disgust. We will also examine how recent research suggests that interoceptive signals can play a pivotal role in more complex social and emotional behaviours in addition to clinical mental health conditions such as panic disorder and anorexia nervosa. To support this, the module introduces the theory of predictive coding, which explains how the brain constructs interoceptive bodily experience through predictions based on prior beliefs and prior experience.
The Skills Weeks component of this module is an opportunity for students to focus on consolidating their understanding of core concepts of experimental design within a mental health research context. The sessions will focus on issues current in psychological research including the importance of research coproduction, what to do with confounding variables and the importance of understanding more about the placebo response e.g. in the context of antidepressant effects.
Indicative assessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Closed/in-person Exam (Centrally scheduled) | 50.0 |
| Essay/coursework | 50.0 |
Special assessment rules
None
Indicative reassessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Closed/in-person Exam (Centrally scheduled) | 50.0 |
| Essay/coursework | 50.0 |
Module feedback
The marks on all assessed work will be provided on e-vision.
Indicative reading
The Brain & Behaviour strand uses different reading materials across the teaching blocks in both Y1 and Y2, please see the reading list for each teaching block. Example reading includes chapters from:
- Purves, Dale. (2013). Principles of cognitive neuroscience. Sinauer Associates. Second Edition.
- Ward, Jamie (2010). The student's guide to cognitive neuroscience. Hove : Psychology Press