Overview

This program of three online courses introduces the key concepts of the human brain, before exploring the effects that Parkinson’s disease and drugs have on it.

The Good Brain, Bad Brain program is suitable for anyone who wants to know more about the brain: you may be doing your A-levels and considering a neuroscience-related degree; or you may already be working in healthcare and want to learn more as part of your continuing professional development (CPD).

Either way, the courses provide a flexible way to learn - they are accessible for free on desktop, tablet or mobile and delivered in bite-sized chunks.

And when you complete all three courses and buy a Certificate of Achievement for each, you will earn a FutureLearn Award as proof of completing the program of study.

Syllabus

Courses under this program:
Course 1: Good Brain, Bad Brain: Basics
-What do we know and what are we discovering about the form and function of the human brain? Find out with this online course.

Course 2: Good Brain, Bad Brain: Parkinson's Disease
-Learn the fundamentals of Parkinson's disease with this online course. What causes it and what we can do to treat it?

Course 3: Good Brain, Bad Brain: Drug Origins
-Explore our past, present and future understanding of drugs with this online course. Where do drugs come from? How do they work?

Courses

11 reviews
3 weeks
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Understand your own amazing brain

We will look at what your brain is made of, how these components are organised and how they function.

This information is helping neuroscientists across the globe understand the brain - and how it is able to do everything from stopping you falling off your bike, to making you feel sad that your football team lost their game, to helping you learn how your brain works.

This course is aimed at anyone with an interest in finding out the fundamentals of how the human brain works. It assumes that you will have basic school-level biological knowledge.

You might be doing your A-levels and considering a neuroscience-related degree; a computer-scientist interested in neural networks; or in business and wondering how the workings of your employees’ brains influences the culture of your business.
6 reviews
3 weeks, 3 hours a week, 3 hours a week
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Understand Parkinson’s Disease

This online course is aimed at anyone who wants to find out the fundamentals of Parkinson’s disease. We will look at how Parkinson’s disease affects people; what causes it; what we can do to try to ameliorate the symptoms of Parkinson’s; and what we don’t yet know about it.

The course is aimed at anyone who wants to find out the fundamentals of Parkinson’s disease.

You will need to have a basic knowledge of what the brain is made of, how these component cellular parts are organised and the principles of how these cells function normally. It will be suitable if you have taken the Good Brain, Bad Brain: Basics course or who studied neuroscience in the early years of an undergraduate degree.
5 reviews
2 weeks
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Where do drugs come from?

We’ll start by reflecting on the nature of medicines and look at the history of some everyday drugs that have been taken by humans for centuries.

This will show us that many commonly used drugs were found somewhat accidentally - and often without any understanding of the science behind how they worked. Over time, this apparently random process has been refined and improved, so we’ll go on to consider recent advances in identifying potential drugs.

This course is aimed at anyone with an interest in finding out where the drugs that keep us healthy come from. To take the course, the only experience you need is to have taken a drug - even just a throat lozenge.