Leader: Dr Jennifer Short

Offered

Parkville Second semester 2008 (Day)

Synopsis

This unit builds on previous units in pharmacology, with a focus on the central nervous system; physiology, pathophysiology and pharmacology. In particular, the role of the reticular formation, hypothalamus, basal ganglia and limbic system will be studied, with an emphasis on drugs related to function and dysfunction in these systems.

Objectives

At the end of this unit students will be able to:

1. Describe the central nervous system mechanisms controlling alertness and sleep, motor function and behaviour.
2. Explain the rationale for the pharmacological treatment of insomnia, epilepsy and movement disorders
3. Describe the symptoms of and treatment of neuroses or affective disorders such as anxiety, depression and obsessive compulsive disorder.
4. Describe the symptoms of and treatment of psychoses such as schizophrenia.
5. Write a literature review describing relevant pharmacological experimental paradigms, perform statistical analyses and discuss experimental results in the context of previous literature

Assessment

Practicals and practical assessment and one end of semester examination worth 60%.

Contact hours

24 x 1 hour lectures per week, 4 x 3 hour tutorials and 1 x 1 hour full class tutorial. It is expected that this unit will require participants to allocate an average of 6 hours per week for 13 weeks (a total of 78 hours per study period) to successfully complete this unit.

Prerequisites

VCP2041 and VCP2042