King's College London

This course builds upon compulsory level 4 courses with a review of the muscle cell and an understanding of the biochemical processes involved in the metabolism of carbohydrates, fats and aminoacids to provide the energy for muscle contraction. It also provides an understanding of how metabolism changes and is regulated in different types of exercise, and the role of nutrition in modulating these changes. 

The course examines the classical distinction between 'nature’ and ‘nurture’, and the status of genetic and environmental explanations of psychological variation. The research techniques covered include twin studies, gene-environment interaction studies, Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) and polygenic risk scores. The course also explores the nature of gender differences, including the role of biological sex and culture in the development of gender identity, and sex differences in cognitive abilities and vulnerability to mental health problems and developmental disorders such as autism. Lastly, students explore social and cultural influences on the vulnerability to mental health problems, using developmental psychology, global mental health, and social psychiatry approaches. 

This course maps out the contemporary social media landscape. It explores the concepts, practices, and cultures that have emerged through the use of social media, and the issues of contention that have developed in related academic debates. It also situates social media in a historical context, drawing attention to continuities, and disjunctions in how computer-mediated communication interacts with economic, political, and social life.

In this course students learn about crucial cognitive functions. To learn about these functions, the course looks at ‘distorted’ cognitions in health, in neurological, and in psychiatric patients. Distortions, in memory, perception, and across other areas of cognition, are highly informative. Healthy human beings are often inaccurate when judging what is right in front of their eyes, what happened in an event from their memory or how much their behavior is modulated by emotional responses. Neurological injury leads to systematic changes in perception and cognition and by studying these distortions we can learn about the role of different brain regions and networks in affected functions. Finally, psychiatric illness often dramatically modulates conscious experience. From looking at both everyday and pathological ‘distortions’ students learn more about how the brain fulfils the incredibly complex task of creating our mental world. 

This course covers linear models, regression analysis, analysis of variance, with applications in various fields. Students use a specialized statistical software package to analyze linear models.