Student-Driven Seminar on Sleep & Stress: Cognitive, Clinical and Developmental Issues

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This seminar will provide an introduction to the independent and interactive roles of sleep and stress in cognition and psychopathology. Topics covered will include disorders of the sleep and stress systems, how sleep and stress at normal and abnormal levels impact learning, memory, and affective processing, and how the interaction of these variables influence the development and prognosis of clinical conditions such as anxiety disorders (e.g. PTSD) and mood disorders (e.g. major depression). The role of dreaming in psychopathological conditions will also be discussed. We will examine neuroimaging, neurophysiological, and behavioral approaches to the study of sleep, stress and psychopathology, discussing critical questions such as "what is stress?", "why do we sleep?, and "what happens when the sleep and stress systems go awry?" This course is an excellent choice for all graduate students in psychology and biology or anyone interested in the neuroscience of behavior. It is particularly relevant for students of cognitive neuroscience, clinical psychology, cognitive psychology, neurobiology, or developmental psychology.