24
Lectures
30
minutes/lecture
1.
Why Don't Zebras Get Ulcers? Why Do We?
In Professor Sapolsky's introductory lecture, get a behind-the-scenes look at the science of stress and preview the groundwork for the course ahead. What exactly happens to our bodies when we come under stress? And how is our response to stress different from that of a zebra being hunted al ong a savannah?
1.
Why Don't Zebras Get Ulcers? Why Do We?
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13.
Stress, Learning, and Memory
Memory—whether implicit or explicit—is an essential part of everyday life. So it's all the more important to understand how it's affected by stress. This lecture explains the science behind how short-term stress enhances memory and learning, while chronic stress may actually work to kill neurons in the hippocampus.
13.
Stress, Learning, and Memory
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2.
The Nuts and Bolts of the Stress-Response
Every time you have a thought or emotion, things change in your body. Here, explore the two factors responsible for these changes: the nervous system and hormones. Learn how these systems work, how they're regulated, and—most important—what happens to them during moments of stress.
2.
The Nuts and Bolts of the Stress-Response
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14.
Stress, Judgment, and Impulse Control
In addition to affecting the hippocampus, stress can prove harmful to the frontal cortex as well—the seat of behavioral regulation. As in previous lectures, discover what happens to this essential part of the brain when it comes under attack from chronic stress.
14.
Stress, Judgment, and Impulse Control
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3.
Stress and Your Heart
Armed with the necessary background information, explore how specific organ systems suffer when faced with chronic stress. In the first of a series of lectures on this subject, learn how long-term stress can damage heart muscles, inflame and clog blood vessels, and even lead to sudden cardiac arrest.
3.
Stress and Your Heart
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15.
Stress, Sleep, and Lack of Sleep
Most of us don't get as much sleep as we should. Yet the amount of sleep we get is highly intertwined with how our bodies deal with stress. Investigate why high levels of stress disrupt not only how long we sleep—but the quality of sleep's vital restorative powers as well.
15.
Stress, Sleep, and Lack of Sleep
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4.
Stress, Metabolism, and Liquidating Your Assets
The next organ system you focus on: the metabolic system. Discover how cycles of chronic stress lead to a persistent activating and storing of energy, which in turn can lead to an inefficient use of energy and play a critical role in the prevalence of adult-onset diabetes.
4.
Stress, Metabolism, and Liquidating Your Assets
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16.
Stress and Aging
As you age, your ability to deal with stress decreases. What's more: Lots of stress throughout your lifetime can accelerate aspects of aging. Here, examine a series of intriguing experiments and studies that explain the science behind these two views about the intersection between stress and aging.
16.
Stress and Aging
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5.
Stress, Overeating, and Your Digestive Tract
Focus now on the role stress plays in our gastrointestinal tracts. Why do most of us eat more during stressful periods? How does stress affect bowel disorders like irritable bowel syndrome and spastic colons? And how does stress combine with a bacterial infection to produce a common stress-related disease: ulcers?
5.
Stress, Overeating, and Your Digestive Tract
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17.
Understanding Psychological Stress
Why are some stressors more unbearable than others? This lecture introduces you to three powerful psychological factors that work to modulate the stress response: having an outlet, taking advantage of social support, and having predictive information about when and how long a stressor will occur.
17.
Understanding Psychological Stress
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6.
Stress and Growth—Echoes from the Womb
The first of two lectures on stress and child development takes you inside prenatal and postnatal life. Using two extraordinary examples, Professor Sapolsky reveals the ways a fetus can respond to the environmental stressors of its mother, and how different parenting styles can affect the stress levels of young children.
6.
Stress and Growth—Echoes from the Womb
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18.
Psychological Modulators of Stress
Conclude your look at ways to modulate the stress response by looking at two subtler variables: your control over the stressor, and your interpretation of whether the stress is getting better or worse. You also see why, despite being enormously powerful, these variables can work only within certain parameters.
18.
Psychological Modulators of Stress
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7.
Stress, Growth, and Child Development
Investigate how chronic stress can disrupt the growth of young children by focusing on stress dwarfism and the connection between stress and low growth hormone levels. Also, learn how mid-20th-century experiments with monkeys proved how important love—and not just nutrients—is in raising less-stressful children.
7.
Stress, Growth, and Child Development
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19.
Stress and the Biology of Depression
Turn to the realm of mental health with this close look at the ties between stress and major depression—one of the leading causes of disability in the world. Start with an overview of the disorder's symptoms before delving into the particulars of its neurochemistry and neuroanatomy.
19.
Stress and the Biology of Depression
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8.
Stress and Female Reproduction
Get an insightful overview of the multifaceted effects of stress on the female reproductive system. Some of the topics you explore are the intricate relationships between stress and fertilization, ovulation, spontaneous miscarriages, high-tech in vitro fertilization, and the strength of the libido.
8.
Stress and Female Reproduction
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20.
Stress and the Psychology of Depression
To truly understand clinical depression, you need to grasp its psychological aspects as well. In the second lecture on stress and this prevalent disease, explore the pivotal role stress hormones play in depression. Then, use your newfound knowledge of stress to knit together the psychological and biological models of depression.
20.
Stress and the Psychology of Depression
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9.
Stress and Male Reproduction
Despite being simpler than its female counterpart, the male reproductive system is just as vulnerable to chronic stress. Here, discover how stress leads not to a major decrease in testosterone so much as an increase in erectile dysfunction (with a focus on two of the most common symptoms: impotency and premature ejaculation).
9.
Stress and Male Reproduction
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21.
Anxiety, Hostility, Repression, and Reward
Anxiety disorders, feelings of intense hostility, a decreased capacity for pleasure, and a repressed or addictive persona are just a few of the many distinct effects that chronic stress can have on an individual's personality and behavior. The ways these psychological disorders emerge are the subject of this fascinating lecture.
21.
Anxiety, Hostility, Repression, and Reward
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10.
Stress and Your Immune System
Turn now to the relationship between stress and your immune system. After mastering the basics of how this system works, delve into how frequent stressors can result in flare-ups of autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, can increase your vulnerability to infections like the common cold and herpes viruses, and more.
10.
Stress and Your Immune System
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22.
Stress, Health, and Low Social Status
How strong a role does socioeconomic status play in what stressors you're exposed to, as well as your potential for chronic stress? It's a provocative question whose answer Professor Sapolsky reveals in this penetrating look at the characteristics and effects of psychosocial stress on both primates and humans.
22.
Stress, Health, and Low Social Status
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11.
Stress and Cancer
Can an increase in stress actually cause cancer? Can it cause a relapse among patients in remission, or speed up the rate of a cancer's progression? Professor Sapolsky offers his insights on these and other controversial questions and myths about the possible links between stress and cancer.
11.
Stress and Cancer
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23.
Stress Management—Clues to Success?
Before learning tips to manage chronic stress, it's essential to understand why certain individuals cope better with stress—both physically and mentally—than others. Discover that the key lies in grasping predictors of successful aging, including a position of respect, a resilient personality, a healthy lifestyle, and a realistic approach to life's challenges.
23.
Stress Management—Clues to Success?
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12.
Stress and Pain
Stress and pain have an intriguing relationship: Stress can increase your sensitivity and resistance to pain, while pain constitutes its own particular stressor. Explore this fascinating bidirectional relationship, and expand your knowledge of how both balanced and stressed minds and bodies react to all varieties of pain.
12.
Stress and Pain
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24.
Stress Management—Approaches and Cautions
Exercise. Meditation. Social support. Religious beliefs. In this concluding lecture, learn how these and other outlets can potentially help you manage life's everyday stressors—both biologically and psychologically. Regardless of how many stressors you deal with daily, all of us, according to Professor Sapolsky, have the potential to keep them in perspective.
24.
Stress Management—Approaches and Cautions
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24
Lectures
30
minutes/lecture
1.
Biology and Behavior—An Introduction
Professor Robert Sapolsky outlines the course, emphasizing that there is a neurobiology to who we are; it is vital that we learn about it; and it can be understood best through the interdisciplinary approach of this course.
1.
Biology and Behavior—An Introduction
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13.
What Do Genes Do? Microevolution of Genes
In this first of four lectures on the role of genes in sculpting behavior, you examine what a gene is and does. The main intellectual thrust of this module is to demonstrate the futility of the nature-versus-nurture debate when considering genes and the brain.
13.
What Do Genes Do? Microevolution of Genes
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2.
The Basic Cells of the Nervous System
You begin a trio of lectures on the neurobiology of behavior at the cellular level. An overview of how a single neuron works explores the difference between the neuron's quiescent state, or resting potential, and its excited state, or action potential.
2.
The Basic Cells of the Nervous System
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14.
What Do Genes Do? Macroevolution of Genes
Evolution can be formally defined as changes in the function and distribution of genes in populations over time. But what exactly evolves in a gene on the molecular level? This lecture reviews what mutations are on that level and how they can affect behavior.
14.
What Do Genes Do? Macroevolution of Genes
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3.
How Two Neurons Communicate
In this lecture you expand your study of neurons to see how two neurons communicate through the use of neurotransmitters—chemical messengers in the brain—and you examine the effects of certain drugs on the brain and on the neurological origins of individuality.
3.
How Two Neurons Communicate
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15.
Behavior Genetics
How can you tell when a behavior has a genetic component? This lecture introduces the field of behavior genetics, which seeks to determine the extent that genes explain qualities such as intelligence, aggression, or introversion/extroversion.
15.
Behavior Genetics
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4.
Learning and Synaptic Plasticity
This lecture describes how communication between neurons changes as a result of experience. The focus is on long-term potentiation (LTP) and how the process occurs in the hippocampus, with implications for learning and memory; and in the amygdala, with implications for fear and anxiety.
4.
Learning and Synaptic Plasticity
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16.
Behavior Genetics and Prenatal Environment
The basic premise of behavior genetics is that when research controls for environment it can reveal the effects of genes. This lecture shows that this is virtually impossible to do because genes and environment interact constantly, particularly in the realm of behavior. The lecture also explores the results of environmental effects on fetuses.
16.
Behavior Genetics and Prenatal Environment
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5.
The Dynamics of Interacting Neurons
Expanding beyond the scale of the cell, you begin a three-lecture survey of the systems level. In this lecture you look at how neurons sharpen detection signals through inhibition and how layers of neurons that overlap and form networks affect individual memory, pain, and creativity.
5.
The Dynamics of Interacting Neurons
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17.
An Introduction to Ethology
This is the first of two lectures on ethology, the study of animals in their natural habitat, and insights about the human brain and behavior that can be gleaned from it. Here, Professor Sapolsky gives an overview of ethology, a discipline that developed to counter behaviorist psychology.
17.
An Introduction to Ethology
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6.
The Limbic System
You investigate how subregions of the brain made of millions of neurons function. The focus is on the limbic system, which is most centrally involved in emotion and in generating emotional behavior. The limbic system will be central to the rest of the course.
6.
The Limbic System
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18.
Neuroethology
This lecture explores neuroethology, the study of the neural mechanisms mediating the naturalistic behavior of animals. In particular, you look at how the functioning of the limbic system varies among species and how the human limbic system can be understood in that context.
18.
Neuroethology
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7.
The Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)
Professor Sapolsky examines how the limbic system regulates the function of the body by way of the autonomic nervous system and its subparts: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.
7.
The Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)
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19.
The Neurobiology of Aggression I
The final module of the course applies the previous lessons to the study of aggression. In this lecture you explore the neural bases of aggression—first the neurochemistry of aggressive behavior, then its neuroanatomy, emphasizing the limbic system and the frontal cortex.
19.
The Neurobiology of Aggression I
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8.
The Regulation of Hormones by the Brain
The first of two lectures on hormones and behavior examines how the limbic system regulates the body through the release of many types of hormones. You review the nature of this regulation and the basic ways hormones work.
8.
The Regulation of Hormones by the Brain
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20.
The Neurobiology of Aggression II
This lecture poses two questions: What environmental events can trigger the limbic system to exert aggressive behavior seconds to minutes later? And how do hormones modulate the sensitivity of the brain to those environmental triggers? You focus on the hormone testosterone.
20.
The Neurobiology of Aggression II
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9.
The Regulation of the Brain by Hormones
This lecture considers the converse of the brain's regulation of hormones, namely, the hormones' regulation of the brain. How can hormones change the function and even the very structure of the brain? A key point of this and the preceding lecture is to refute the view that hormones "cause" behaviors.
9.
The Regulation of the Brain by Hormones
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21.
Hormones and Aggression
The first part of this lecture explores how patterns of hormone exposure around the time of birth can influence adult patterns of aggression. The second part examines how genes may influence the neurobiology of aggression but never outside the context of strong environmental interactions.
21.
Hormones and Aggression
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10.
The Evolution of Behavior
The first of three lectures on the evolution of the brain and behavior reviews the mechanisms of evolution and then looks at the ways species can maximize through behavioral means the number of copies of their genes passed on to the next generation.
10.
The Evolution of Behavior
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22.
Early Experience and Aggression
You look at the role of environmental factors in aggression occurring days to decades later. In particular, you examine the effect of reward and punishment, early experience and social learning, and the ways those experiences can shape the development of relevant parts of the brain.
22.
Early Experience and Aggression
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11.
The Evolution of Behavior—Some Examples
You investigate how the evolution of behavior helps explain, and even predict, social behavior in numerous species that vary in how aggressive they are, whether they are monogamous or polygamous, and whether males participate in childcare, among other traits.
11.
The Evolution of Behavior—Some Examples
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23.
Evolution, Aggression, and Cooperation
The final lecture in this module looks at the evolution of aggression, examining which evolutionary factors promote aggressive behavior and how evolutionary biology gives scientists insights into ways that aggression might be contained.
23.
Evolution, Aggression, and Cooperation
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12.
Cooperation, Competition, and Neuroeconomics
You review the evolution of competition and how the brain functions under different settings of competition. The formal analysis of such behavior, called game theory, is introduced and framed in both the context of the evolution of such strategizing and the sort of brains that can accomplish it.
12.
Cooperation, Competition, and Neuroeconomics
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24.
A Summary
How much do insights into the neurobiology of human behaviors threaten a person's sense of self and individuality? Professor Sapolsky summarizes what science has learned about the neurobiology of individual differences, stressing the profound implications of this knowledge.
24.
A Summary
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