Essentials of Neuroscience (online)

This online course gives you a unique opportunity to study the state of the art insights in Neurosciences, discover the research strengths of UMC Utrecht and experience our educational philosophy. Wherever you are, you can join our academic community of eager, young minds from behind your computer! The course will consist of web lectures by renowned experts as well as articles, group assignments, individual assignments, peer feedback and feedback from teachers. During the course you will interact with other participants through assignments and discussions. The course will be moderated actively by professional moderators and teaching staff of the Brain Center Rudolf Magnus of UMC Utrecht.

At the end of the course the participant:

• has knowledge of the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying psychiatric (e.g. schizophrenia, addiction, autism and ADHD) and neurological diseases (e.g. epilepsy and Huntington”s disease);
• can formulate a research question and describe experiments to address this research question in the field of neuroscience;
• can present and defend a research question in front of peers;
• has an overview of research in the field of neuroscience at the UMC Utrecht.

The aim of the course is to provide background in molecular and cellular neuroscience to understand mechanisms underlying psychiatiric and neurological diseases for academics.

9 weeks, 9 hours per week

To successfully complete this course, you need to actively participate, including:

• a research proposal
• a presentation

Even though you can manage your own time our courses are not intended as individual education. We offer personalized online learning with lots of interaction with peer students and the E-moderator.

Flexibility from students, a positive attitude towards teachers and peers and the willingness to learn together and help each other is invaluable to our courses. To experience maximum interaction, we advise you to log on several times per week.

Note that the starting dates of courses, interim (weekly) deadlines, and end date are fixed, but you can choose when and where you want to watch web lectures and work on assignments. The e-moderator of the course will inform you about the beginning of the course and about deadlines during the course.

The average required study workload for the course is 9 hours per week. You will need this time to study, to keep up with the assignments and course material.

General questions

For general questions, please contact:

Content questions

For specific questions about the course content, please contact:

For this course, you will need:

• Parts of Neuroscience (Purves et al., Sinauer Ass.Inc., Sunderland, Massachusetts, 4e editie, 2004 (ISBN 978-0-87893-697-7)) and recent reviews and original articles.

Please note that this course is part of an existing program within the Graduate School of Life Sciences. Tuitition fees may alter during the year.