BMS5101

This course is designed to provide you with introductory knowledge on the human nervous system. The course covers brain and brainstem anatomy, the principal centers and neural pathways, and the functional correlates of the somatosensory, motor, and autonomic nervous system.

The course has a laboratory component consisting of 5 sessions or 2h each covering gross brain and brainstem anatomy with dissections and one exam. Two additional 2h labs will cover the cranial nerves of the face and neck along other 2 relevant structures from a complete human cadaver. This lab component is part of the medical curriculum and corresponds to the dissected face and neck by medical students. This is a unique opportunity to get introduced to the Bequest Program (1h training) and understand the scope of lab dissections in medical school. The classroom sessions will cover anatomy elements, pathways, cellular / molecular neuroscience, action potentials and synaptic transmission, and emphasis on the ascending, motor, and autonomic nervous systems. The course will use problem-based learning (PBL) combining clinical reasoning with neuroscience mechanistic thinking and culminating in a detailed concept map.

The difference between BMS 4101 for undergraduate students and BMS 5101 for graduate students is the additional independent work assigned to graduate students. Graduate students will be assigned articles from the primary literature to allow deep dives into relevant topics. Students will turn in short papers summarizing the technical elements and the key findings of the paper.

pre-req: BIOL 3100

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