Hello everyone. Welcome to the syllabus section that we’re
going to be covering today. Let’s begin by clicking on the view “PowerPoint
version of the syllabus.” Again what we’re going to do is click on “open”
and we are ready to go. As we can see here, there is the title
Physiological Psychology, Psychology 372. So let’s click down and give you
some general information. As we see on slide two, there is an overview of
where I am located. I live in Student Health Room 211 and my phone numbers
are available here. I have an open door policy for this class, so basically
my office hours are wide open. If I’m available, I will be more than happy
to talk or listen to you or respond to your emails, etc.
Let’s talk about the textbooks. As we can see on the next
page for the class, there are three basic books that we need for this
class. The first book is by Carlson, Physiology of Behavior. Carlson has a
fairly good overview of Physiological Psychology. It’s not as rigorous as
some other books such as Kandal, Schwartz, and Jessel which is extremely
detailed, and it’s a lot better and more rigorous than other books. So,
it’s a pretty good fit for the way that I feel about the way that the class
should be taught.
The second book is by De Armond, Fusco and Dewey, et al..
Basically this book is a brain atlas. It consists of a series of CT scans
of the human brain. It’s in its 3rd edition and although it’s been
available since 1989, it’s an excellent book.
The third book for this class is an optional book. That
is the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. It’s
now in its 5th edition and it is a pretty good reference guide for you when
developing your term papers which we are going to discuss a little bit
later.
Let’s move on and go down to the next page. This is the
“Points to Note” page. There are some things that you need to do.
On the next page there are some studying recommendations
that I have for this class and I would suggest that you follow them if you
can. You should, at a minimum, spend an hour a day every day studying for
this class. There are no easy tricks to understanding material, its slug it
out, rote memorization in a lot of ways, and working to comprehend and
understand how the material works. There’s no easy way to do it; if I had
one, I would tell you, but there isn’t any. One way to help yourself is to
study in groups and quiz yourself; go over the material, talk about material
that you have seen, question yourself, question others, etc. People who
study in groups tend to do better than people who study alone. That is, if
you don’t sit around and talks about all of the different things that are
going on out there (such as the weather or your favorite sports team).
Another studying recommendation I have is to outline your
text material and outline your notes. In general, individuals who outline
their text do better than individuals who just highlight or just kind of
read through it. When you highlight, what are you trying to do? Well, for
most of us, when you’re highlighting, you’re not really doing anything
except trying to keep the yellow marker on the line. So you don’t really
get the information in your brain. But if you do outline your material, you
read it, you’re writing it, you’re visually seeing it, and auditorially
listening to it as you’re writing it. So you’re putting information into
your brain four different ways. Once you’ve done the outline, don’t go back
into the book unless you kind of want to review something, etc., just review
your outlines and if you’ve done well, you should be well prepared. You can
also outline your notes and use a similar format.
Look for trends as you’re studying this material. There
are a lot of trends, and a lot of the systems work identically, it’s just
that they’re working in different areas. For example, the auditory system
is highly similar to the visual system. It’s just that it’s using a
different set of structures to get the information to the brain. There are
some specific techniques of course you can always use, you can use the SQ3R
method or the SQ4R method, and there are many other studying techniques out
there as well.
And finally and most important, if you don’t understand
something, ask questions. The only stupid question is the one that’s never
asked. You will have lots of questions, so make sure that you’re doing that
to do well.
Let’s now move on to the some topics page. What this page
describes is some of the topics that we’re going to be covering. For
example, we’re going to talk about measurement and some research methods
that we use. We’re going to talk about the anatomy and physiology of the
brain. We’re going to talk about sensation and movement and how those work
together. We’re also going to talk about neuroanatomy and neurophysiology
which is really the hottest area of neuroscience right now. Finally, (and
what a lot of students find interesting) we’re going to talk about some
disorders of the nervous system and some treatment options that we have for
these problems.
Let’s move on to the next page, which is the outside
resources page. There’s a wide variety of resources that are available to
help you with this class. Your book provides a CD that has a variety of
different exercises in it. I would suggest that you use it. It also has
numerous web sites within the text and on the CD for you to check out. Of
course, we have our web site, which is what we have listed there. We also
have a wide variety of governmental web sites; (NIH, NSF, CDC, and others)
and numerous web sites that have information regarding different brain
disorders, how things work, etc.
In addition the American Psychological Association web
site has lots and lots of different resources as well, including Psych info
and Psych lit, which basically gives you a whole wide variety of search
engines to find all sorts of different research articles which you’ll need
to do for your paper. Finally, your local library has a variety of
different search engines that you can use to help you learn about different
diseases and materials for your term paper which we’ll cover in a little
while.
Well, now that we’ve covered a little bit about what the
course is going to cover, let’s talk a little bit about the requirements for
the class and what you’re going to have to do. There are three exams in
this class and each is worth 100 points. They will mostly be essay and short
answer. There may be a few fill in the blank, but for right now, essay and
short answer is what they will be. Each exam is worth 100 points and so as
a result, there will be 300 points for the exams. You will also have to
complete 10 on-line brain Assessments which are 10 points a pop.
These are materials that you will access through WEB CT. In essence you
will be provided with a picture and you will identify the 10 different
structures that are within that. You will have three opportunities to
complete each structure. If you need more than that, that will be just the
way it is. You need to make sure that you save your material when in WEB
CT, so make sure that you follow the directions very clearly and
specifically to make sure that you have saved your information.
If you have done the structure and you blew it just make
sure contact me and we’ll make sure that we work it out. Don’t stress on
the WEB CT stuff. Make sure that you understand where the different
structures are located. Of course, if you’re having problems with WEB CT,
you can always call the help desk (885-2725) to have them help you.
In addition to the brain structures and the exams, you
will be required to write a term paper which is worth 100 points. It is to
be 5 to 10 pages on some topic related to a brain or nervous system
disorder. I don’t care what it is, find something that’s of interest to
you. It might be on a tumor that your parent or a friend might have had, or
it might be on a stroke or it might be on some particular disease such as
Alzheimer’s or schizophrenia that you’re interested it. The paper is to be
in APA style and computer or typewritten.
Finally you can receive 30 points of extra credit as
well. The extra credit can be obtained through a couple of different ways.
It can be obtained from doing experiments if you are on the University of
Idaho main campus, or by writing a small annotated bibliography on some
topic of your choice. If you’re going to do an annotated bibliography,
please contact me for directions and what I’m expecting.
Let’s move on to the grading sheet now. The grades that
you will receive is based on all considerations—the exams, the quizzes, the
paper and of course extra credit if you have any, for a total of 500
points. And as you can see on the next page, the actual grades; to get an A
in this class, you have to have a minimum of 450 points, a B 400 and on and
on and on.
Exam grading criteria: I would suggest that you review
these and
