James Pfaus

The aim of this course is to provide practical experience and guidance about structuring and writing research papers in psychology. At the beginning, lectures will cover pertinent information about how to conduct proper literature reviews, writing style and APA format, and the specific logic of the methods and results, introduction and discussion, and abstracts. Then you will be given a data set from a study and its methods. You will have to conduct your own literature review on the topic and then write a short but complete paper with an abstract, introduction, methods, results, and discussion, along with a reference section, all in APA format. Following this exercise, you will be exposed to the Paperchase method of group writing, using another data set from a different study and its methods. The groups will write up their papers and submit them. However, each group member will present an individual paper that is a refinement of the group effort. Class attendance is mandatory. Everything presented in the lectures and during the writing activities are critical to do completing the assignments.

This course explores the hormonal, neurochemical, and neuroanatomical mechanisms that

underlie sexual behavior, including sexual arousal, desire, pleasure and orgasm, inhibition,

conditioned sexual responses, and their disruption in sexual dysfunctions and disorders like

paraphilias. Material is drawn from several disciplines, including clinical sexology, sexual

medicine, anatomy, physiology, neuroendocrinology, pharmacology and neurochemistry, and

basic neuroscience. This course will prepare you for the seminar in sexual behavior and sexual

medicine that follows it in the Winter term. The course will consist of lectures and journal

articles that should be read before each class. There will be a final exam based on the course

material and readings and a final paper of a topic of your choice within the domain of the

neurobiology of sexual behavior. The test will be composed of multiple choice, true-false, and

short answer questions. The course will be offered in English.

KURZ JE URČEN VÝHRADNĚ PRO STUDNETY/KY PRVNÍHO ROČNÍKU.

Kurz bude probíhat prostřednictvím týdenních prezentací členů katedry psychologie a věd o životě o jejich výzkumných projektech, a bude pokrývat širokou škálu psychologických témat, od kognitivní, vývojové, evoluční, sociální po psychologii sexuální či psychologii stáří. Součástí kurzu bude povinná četba v češtině i angličtině. Studenti se v rámci přednášek i v povinné četbě seznámí s výzkumným procesem, základy experimentálního designu a analýzy dat. Kurz bude zakončen písemným testem.

Absolvování kurzu a dobré výsledky v závěrečném testu budou zohledňovány při výběru studentů nad limit do předmětu Úvod do psychologie.

Follow-up course to Introduction to the Brain. The goal of the course is to understand the pharmacological and psychological bases of drug actions, and to explore how they relate to the use and abuse of therapeutic and recreational drugs. The course material will provide you with a sound background in basic neuropharmacology, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and drug classification schemes, along with an understanding of the cultural history of drug use and abuse, and how drug actions depend on the make up of the individual. This information will give you an edge in understanding and predicting drug actions, understanding why people sometimes do not comply with drug therapies, and a knowledge of how drug effects can differ based on genetics, expectation, experience, learning, and other individual factors. You will also be exposed to the political debates that continue to rage worldwide about the use and abuse of recreational drugs. Accordingly, like my other courses, this one will be reasonably time-consuming. Much will be required of you in terms of reading and integrating ideas, concepts, and raw facts. But everyone finds information about drugs interesting and important, and most find some aspects that are directly applicable to their personal and/or professional lives. Course materials, including the syllabus, readings, and the Powerpoint slides that I use in class, are posted on the course Moodle website and can be downloaded. You should take an active approach to studying in this course, and I urge you to form study groups early with other students in the class. As is the case for any researcher reading the scientific literature, you must work to extract the essential material, integrating text, illustrations, and class lectures. Try to read the articles in a timely manner. The lectures will provide you with an overview of the material and will be a forum for discussion. They are prepared on the assumption that you have already read the assignments and have made a serious effort to understand them. It is important that you do not fall behind in the readings. "Cramming" before the exams will only drive you crazy and will not help you to understand the information. To do well on my exams you must understand the information, not merely regurgitate it. I will do my best to help you understand what you have read and will be available for office hours by appointment. There will be an in-class midterm and a final exam. The midterm is worth 1/3 and the final is worth 2/3. Exams will consist of multiple-choice, true-false, and short essays, along with a bonus question that I will let you know about before the exams.

This course is the first part of a two-course series. Its aim is to provide you with an introduction to the brain, how it works, and what its neural and neurochemical mechanisms are that underlie behavior. The emphasis on mechanisms, structures, and concepts is designed to prepare you for the next course in the series, called “Brain and Behavior” that makes use of the concepts learned in this course and applies them to complex motivated behaviors. It is also necessary for any other neuroscience-related courses that may be offered in the future, such as Hormones and Behavior, Drugs and Behavior, etc. Although the highly interdisciplinary material is drawn primarily from the subdisciplines of neuroscience, including neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, neuropharmacology, and neuroendocrinology, our ultimate interest is in behavior. How do we understand behavior on the basis of its biological mechanisms? The course is divided into three units with an equally-weighted examination at the end of each. In the first unit, we will examine the gross structure and function of the nervous system and neuron, with an emphasis on the mechanisms by which nerves send information over long distances. The second unit examines the electrochemical connections between nerve cells and the way that those connections convey information from one cell to another and across networks of nerve cells. You will be exposed to concepts developed in molecular biology, and the way that neurobiologists have applied those concepts to the neuron. The third unit will focus on neurochemical pathways in the brain, neuroendocrinology, and the organization of the autonomic nervous system. This section will conclude by exploring the way in which sensory information is transmitted in the brain using the chemical senses of taste and smell as examples.

Follow-up course to Introduction to brain course.

This seminar is designed to acquaint students with sexual medicine. Sexual medicine is a clinical and research discipline that combines important techniques and findings in the fields of psychiatry, urology, endocrinology, pharmacology, and clinical sex and relationship therapy, to more accurately target and treat a range of sexual dysfunctions and disorders. The seminar focuses on the development and current practice of sexual medicine, and the manner in which it unifies those broad disciplines, creates common goals for animal and human research, and translates those research findings into empirically-based treatment strategies. The goal of the course is to understand how disorders and dysfunctions of sexual arousal, desire, and orgasm, gender identity disorders, sexual pain disorders, the paraphilias, and compulsive sexual behaviors, are rooted in physiology and self-definition, and how treatments must be tailor-made to suit the needs of the individual and couple.

Students that have taken YMPC 012 (Neurobiology of Sexual Behavior) will have an advantage of already 

being acquainted with basic findings in neuroendocrinology, pharmacology, and the role of learning in sexual behavior. The basic reading list is the same, with the addition of the DSM-5 and ICD-11 and related online texts from the ESSM. The seminar will be structured with lectures and group discussion that acquaints you with the two classification systems for sexual disorders, their overlap and their differences, and the underlying features of the diagnoses and potential treatments.