Data
Official data in SubjectManager for the following academic year: 2024-2025
Course director
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Mátics Róbert
associate professor,
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Number of hours/semester
lectures: 24 hours
practices: 0 hours
seminars: 0 hours
total of: 24 hours
Subject data
- Code of subject: OBF-SB3-T
- 2 kredit
- Biotechnology MSc
- Optional modul
- both
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Course headcount limitations
min. 5 – max. 15
Available as Campus course for . Campus-karok: BTK TTK
Topic
Prof Robert Sapolsky at Stanford University has a free course on human behavioural biology on YouTube. It covers topics from molecular and behavioral genetics through sex, aggression, language to diseases like schizophrenia, Huntingtons, Tourettes etc. In this course we will hear and see altogether 8 of his 2010 lectures (each ca. 45-50 mins) and discuss the information delivered. The lectures can be stopped at any point so that emerging questions are negotiated in detail. Some examples:
- How to solve the problem that there are not enough genes to code for every bifurcation in the lungs or blood vessels?
- How to press an infinitely long tube into a limited space?
- What does a fractal have to do with human body development or the wiring of the cortex?
- How do languages arise out of nothing?
- What's the definition of healthy? Somebody, who has the same diseases that everybody else does?
Lectures
- 1. Organisational topics, short introduction - Mátics Róbert
- 2. Reductionism - Mátics Róbert
- 3. from grandmother-neurons to Jennifer Aniston-neurons - Mátics Róbert
- 4. How to run out of genes and neurons? - Mátics Róbert
- 5. Non-linear and non-additive systems. Chaotic systems. - Mátics Róbert
- 6. Lorenz-attractor, strange attractors, the butterfly effect - Mátics Róbert
- 7. Fractals, Menger-sponge, Cantor-cube, Sierpinski carpet - Mátics Róbert
- 8. Cellular automaton, Conways game of life - Mátics Róbert
- 9. Neural networks, engrams, fractals to solve the packing problem - Mátics Róbert
- 10. Six degrees of separation, wiring of the cortex, bottom-up quality control - Mátics Róbert
- 11. Common features of human languages - Mátics Róbert
- 12. Modularity, lateralization, aphasias, alexia, dyslexia - Mátics Róbert
- 13. Chomsky vs Skinner - Mátics Róbert
- 14. Nicaraguan sign language, language acquisition - Mátics Róbert
- 15. Animal languages - Mátics Róbert
- 16. Genetics of language use: FOXP2, HARE5 - Mátics Róbert
- 17. Pidgins to creoles. Disappearing languages - Mátics Róbert
- 18. Huntingtons, Tourettes, PANDAS, OCD, Jerusalem-syndrome, Stendhal-syndrome, Rapunzel-syndrome, Apotemnophilia etc - Mátics Róbert
- 19. Depression: biology and psychology, Reactive and Major depression - Mátics Róbert
- 20. Symptoms: anhedonia, grief, guilt, psychomotor retardation, self-injury, suicide, vegetative symptoms - Mátics Róbert
- 21. SAD, norepinephrine, MAO inhibitors, tricyclic antidepressants, reserpine, dopamine, Prozac, serotonine and SSRIs, substance P - Mátics Róbert
- 22. Psychosurgery, cingulotomy, hypothyroidism, hormonal effects - Mátics Róbert
- 23. mourning vs melancholia, learned helplessness, genetic components - Mátics Róbert
- 24. Summary, questions, discussion, feedback - Mátics Róbert
Practices
Seminars
Reading material
Obligatory literature
no compulsory books
Literature developed by the Department
Handouts will be given
Notes
Extended notes available
Recommended literature
J. Gleick: Chaos. Penguin 1988
Conditions for acceptance of the semester
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Mid-term exams
Make up possible by appointment
Making up for missed classes
Make up possible by appointment
Exam topics/questions
No detailed questions are asked, rather a synthesis and deep understanding of the connections should be reached and given back.