The Biology of Stress

1 Credit · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This short course tackles a topic very relevant to science students: stress. Its presence in daily life has become a constant companion for many, and we’re all-too-familiar with its negative (and positive) consequences. But in this course, we’ll narrow our focus to a particular kind of stress – the chronic biopsychosocial stressors of our society – and the astonishingly damaging long-term physiological and epigenetic consequences of this stress. To better understand this phenomenon, we'll build on basic principles of human physiology, central dogma, and epigenetics, using this foundational understanding to explore the primary scientific literature that is revolutionizing our understanding of the biology of stress. The course meets twice a week for 5 weeks for an intensive deep dive into these ideas.