Psychology 3680Spring 2003

Instructor: Glen PruskyOffice: EP-1220

e-mail: prusky@uleth.caPhone: 329.2555

Psychology 3680Spring 2003

Course Assistant: Carrie KellyOffice: EP-1244

e-mail: carrie.kelly@uleth.caPhone: 394.3937

Office Hours: Tuesday 3:00-4:00 PM Wednesday 3:00-4:00 PM

There is no formal textbook for this course because I have not found one that is appropriate.

Text

Course Outline This course is intended to teach the fundamentals of vision, visual development and visual plasticity. The emphasis will be on the structure and function of the developing visual system of humans and other animals. I will assume that students have no in-depth familiarity with biological science, but be forewarned, this is a neurobiology course.

Course Material

I will rely on lecture materials uploaded to the course website, internet resources, and materials placed on reserve in the library. Attendance in class is the best way to gain access to the information that you will be tested on.

Examination Format There will be 2 exams in the class; a midterm worth 40% of the final grade, and a final worth 40% of your total mark. The format of the exams will be short answer and short essay and will test both factual and conceptual knowledge of the course material. That is, the facts are important, but only as they are needed to develop a conceptual understanding of the course material. Treat the lectures, textbook, and classroom discussions as resources to be used by you to understand the content of the course.

Missed Exams

There will be no make-up exams. In cases where there is a valid reason for missing an exam (ie. documented medical illness), the weight of the missed exam will be apportioned equally to the other.

Examination Dates

Midterm- Tuesday, February 25th

Final- Monday, April 29rd (tentative)

Written Assignment Evaluation in the course also includes a written assignment worth 20% of the final grade, due on April 15th. The assignment will be a summary of 4 related research papers, published since 1996, in the area of developmental visual plasticity. Each paper is to be summarized in 1-2 pages with the original paper appended. Each summary should include the theory, background, research question, methods, results and relevance of the experiments.

Mark DistributionA+ (90+)A (85-89) A- (80-84)B+ (75-79)B (70-74)B- (65-69)C+ (62-64)C (59-61)C- (56-58)D+ (53-55)D (50-52)D- (45-49)F (45-0)

Consultations Carrie and will be available for discussions related to this course most of the time. One of the best ways to contact us if we are not in our office is by e-mail. There we can discuss course-related issues or set a specific time for a personal appointment. As a last resort, ask the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience (CCBN; a.k.a., Exploration Place) secretary, Naomi Cramer (EP-1202; 394-3979), to page us in the laboratory.

“Suppose a man born blind, and now an adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere of the same metal…. Suppose then the cube and sphere placed on a table and the blind man made to see; query, Whether by his sight, before he touched them, could he now distinguish and tell which is the globe, and which the cube? To which the acute and judicious proposer answers: not. For though he has obtained the experience of how a globe, how a cube affects his touch, yet he has not attained the experience that what affects his touch so or so, must affect his sight so or so.”-from a letter written by Willian Molyneux to John Locke,1790

Quotation

Next class…

Natural History of Vision

Structure of the Visual System