Behavioral Neuroscience: Contrasting Tests for Anxiety and Depression

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Free Online Course: Behavioral Neuroscience: Contrasting Tests for Anxiety and Depression provided by edX is a comprehensive online course, which lasts for 5 weeks long, 5-7 hours a week. The course is taught in English and is free of charge. Upon completion of the course, you can receive an e-certificate from edX. Behavioral Neuroscience: Contrasting Tests for Anxiety and Depression is taught by Abel Bult-Ito.

Overview
    • Learn how to critically evaluate the use of different behavioral tests for anxiety and depression in laboratory mice.
    • Evaluate how different behavioral tests can affect the interpretation of results.
    • Collect behavioral data from mouse videos from compulsive-like, non-compulsive-like, and randomly bred mouse strains; a mouse model of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
    • Develop an ability to analyze behavioral data.
    • Develop an ability to interpret and discuss results in the context of human psychiatric disorders and the mouse model of OCD.
    • Obtain a competency in describing key characteristics of anxiety and depression in humans and in animal models.
    • Develop an ability to compare and contrast compulsive-like, anxiety-like, and depression-like behaviors in mice to equivalent conditions in humans.
    • Develop a capability to formulate original research hypotheses.
    • Obtain a competency in describing and discussing how basic research, as performed in this certificate program, contributes to the animal model of OCD and how it may have the potential to contribute to improving the human condition.
    • Learners who join this course should be free of objections to using mice in research.

Syllabus
    • Module 1: Introduction, Anxiety: Background - elevated zero maze test
    • Module 2: Anxiety: Data Collection and Analysis
    • Module 3: Depression: Background - forced swim test
    • Module 4: Depression: Data Collection and Analysis
    • Module 5: Interpretation of results