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Swedish title Beroendets Neurobiologi: Ett Translationellt Perspektiv
English title Translational Neuroscience of Addiction
Course number 2660
Credits 2.0
Responsible KI department Institutionen för klinisk neurovetenskap
Specific entry requirements
Grading Passed /Not passed
Established by The Board of Doctoral Education
Established 2013-09-10
Purpose of the course
Intended learning outcomes At the end of the course the student would have gained a core understanding of addiction, as a chronic brain disease from a biomedical perspective and how to treat it. They will gain knowledge of the neurobiology of alcohol and different drugs of abuse and understand how neurobiology impacts the development of treatment. The students will be able identify the different animal and human models used to study the disease of addiction and discuss the pro's and con's of each model. Finally the students will gain knowledge of the current treatments available for addiction and the novel treatment targets under investigation.
Contents of the course A translational neuroscience of addiction course, aims to provide the opportunity to understand the disease of addiction from the following perspectives: a) epidemiology of addictive disorders, b) role of impulsivity in the development of addiction c) use of animal models to study addiction and its use in evaluating new pharmacological compounds and d) human laboratory and clinical studies as models to bring novel treatment targets to patients.

Teaching and learning activities The course is designed to be in the form of lectures and seminars and a workshop. There will be a visit to the human experimental laboratory for observational learning. The goal of the laboratory visit is to learn how drug related behaviours are studied in a laboratory setting. There will be also be a workshop conducted in connection with the laboratory visit where students will have the opportunity to design a human laboratory study and critically evaluate the methods and outcome measures. The students will achieve the learning goals of this course via a combination of lectures, discussing research articles, reading patient vignettes, group discussions, workshop and a final examination.
Compulsory elements Lectures, seminars and attendance for the laboratory session ( including workshop) and the written examination are all compulsory. In the event of absence, there will be an assigned essay that would need to be handed in. Details of essays will be provided at the course.
Examination There will be a written exam on the last day of the course to evaluate if the students have mastered the learning goals of the course.
Literature and other teaching material Specific reading list for each lecture will be provided at the start of the course. A few select core recommended papers are provided below:

1) Substance abuse and psychiatric co-morbidity as predictors of premature mortality in Swedish drug abusers:
a prospective longitudinal study 1970-2006. Nyhlén A, Fridell M, Bäckström M, Hesse M, Krantz P. BMC
Psychiatry. 2011 Jul 30;11:122.
2) Advances in Animal Models of Relapse for Addiction Research. Weiss F. Kuhn CM, Koob GF, editors.
SourceAdvances in the Neuroscience of Addiction. 2nd edition. Boca Raton (FL): CRC Press; 2010. Chapter 1.
Frontiers in Neuroscience.
3) Neurobiology of addiction. Toward the development of new therapies. Koob GF. Ann N Y Acad Sci.
2000;909:170-85.
4) The genetics of addiction. Volkow ND, Muenke M. Hum Genet. 2012 Jun;131(6):773-7.
Course responsible Nitya Jayaram
Institutionen för klinisk neurovetenskap
072-2483092

Nitya.Jayaram@ki.se
Contact person