Psychopharmacology

Description of Course Goals and Curriculum

Overview: Stock says that we are finally accepting psychoactive drugs as an interesting topic of study. This course offers an introduction to psychopharmacology, which is the study of the biology and biochemistry of drugs which affect the central nervous system. Course Organization: There is one long lecture per week, and one precept. Though the lecture is scheduled for three hours, it tends to run short. Stock sometimes orders pizza. The grade comes from a midterm, a take-home final, and class participation in the form of in-class questions and blackboard posts on recent scientific papers having to do with psychopharmacology. The precept covers important material from the lecture. Challenges: The biggest challenge in this course is the amount of material covered. Though the lectures are couched as case studies of different psychoactive drugs, Stock also covers topics in neuroscience extensively. Because the lectures are so long, they tend to cover a lot of ground. Stock posts videos of his lectures to blackboard, but absorbing all of the information in a lecture still takes time. Hidden expectations: MOL 345 is a prerequisite, so all students will have taken introductory biology. Basic knowledge of neuroscience, particularly signaling, will be beneficial.

Learning From Classroom Instruction

Stock makes frequent references to his recommended readings in lecture, so it is a good idea to be familiar with each of the books on his reading list. However, the most important material is pulled out in the lecture, and the slides as well as an actual video of the lecture will be posted to blackboard. Several of the lectures will be from guest lecturers, and these tend to be more information dense than Stock’s lectures. They are also just as important for the exams.

Learning For and From Assignments

Blackboard posts – require that you find a recent scientific paper having to do with psychopharmacology and report on the research and the key findings in the paper. After summarizing the paper, explain why the findings are important. These posts are brief, and 10 are required over the course of the term. These are good for extending lectures and getting a sense of the modern field of psychopharmacology, as Stock tends to focus heavily on historical context in his lectures. Midterm and final – will only cover material presented in lecture, will not touch material contained in readings but not mentioned in lecture.

External Resources

Scifinder and other databases, even Google Scholar, are good for finding papers for the blackboard posts. A license for Scifinder is available through the university. The recommended readings are enjoyable, but not crucial for the course. Skim them for the passages which Stock refers to in lecture.

What Students Should Know About This Course For Purposes Of Course Selection

The workload for this course is manageable if you stay on top of the blackboard posts by doing one per week. There are no longer assignments, so the amount of work is consistently manageable. This is an ideal course for those who are interested in psychopharmacology, especially those who are interested in going to medical school. It is a less demanding departmental for chemistry and biology majors.