Clinical and Basic Neurobiology of Nervous System Diseases

Yale University, New Haven CT

Investigators

Abstract

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The immense burden of disability and suffering produced by nervous system diseases can best be reduced by educating and involving basic neuroscientists in disease oriented research. To accomplish this we plan to develop a course on the "Clinical and Basic Neurobiology of Diseases of the Nervous System" for all neuroscience graduate students at Yale University and make it available to other neuroscience training programs across the country. The course will be part of the NIH supported "Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program" (INP) (5T32 NS 41228, H. Keshishian PI). The new course will more than double the current 20 lecture course "Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms of Neurologic Disease", which focuses on neurodegenerative diseases. The 2 courses will include a total of 44 lectures covering a wide range of diseases and disorders from the fields of Neurology, Psychiatry and Child Psychiatry. In addition to lectures and a written syllabus, tutorials will be created for each of the 44 lectures utilizing text, graphics, figures, animations and video clips in a web based interactive format to engage students in answering questions and interacting with figures or animations that generate immediate feedback and provide a total score indicating the level of mastery. Each lecture-syllabus-tutorial will include a description of the disease, epidemiology, genetics, case presentations, clinical course, diagnostic methods, treatment, animal models of disease (with a focus on both specific and common neurobiologic mechanisms of pathogenesis), and a discussion of social and ethical aspects of translational research. The course will be directed by an executive-advisory committee led by the 2 co-principle investigators - (a clinician scientist and the principal investigator of the INP) with 3 other members from the Departments of Neurology, Psychiatry and Child [unreadable] Psychiatry and teaching faculty will come from these same 3 organizations. The course will be evaluated with a variety of subjective and objective measures including student scores on the tutorials. The course will have an impact outside Yale University since a webcast of the lecture, the syllabus, and the tutorials will be made available via the internet to other Neuroscience Training Programs. Relevance: The education of basic neuroscience graduate students in the neurobiology of diseases of the nervous system will foster their involvement in disease-oriented research and lead to improved prevention and treatment. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]