Student-Driven Seminar on Sleep and Stress:
Cognitive, Clinical, and Developmental Issues (and Beyond)
Spring 2016
Fridays: 4:00–6:30pm,Payne Residence (50996 Lilac Rd, South Bend, IN 46628)
Professor and Contact Information:
Jessica D. Payne, Ph.D.
Office: Haggar Hall, Room 122-b
Office hours: By appointment
Phone (office): 574-631-1636
Email:
Introduction to The Course
In developing this class, I put a lot of thought into what was most important to me as a graduate student. Many of my classes were interesting, but they often drew my time and energy away from the lab and my efforts to build a publication record. I sometimes felt like I was simply ticking boxes to get the course credits I needed to graduate. Only a few of my classes truly benefited me as a budding academic. I want to make this class one of those rare gems for you. When I think about what made those few classes beneficial, three things come to mind;(1) there was enough breadth devoted to a topic related to my general interests without sacrificing depth in my specific research domain, (2) the instructor provided feedback that helped me grow as a researcher and scientific writer, and, most importantly, (3) the time I spent in the course resulted in an end-product that went beyond simply earning an ‘A’ in the class. For me, this meant leaving the class with a near-publication quality draft of a theoretical review article. I went on to publish that paper while I was still in grad school, and then elaborated on it in a longer review piece when I first became an assistant professor. Some of those ideas are still critical to my thinking today. Talk about a productive learning experience!
With these thoughts in mind, I developed this class. I see it as both a work in progress (I’ve already changed the course title twice!), and an experimental learning journey that we will take together. Your job is to engage with me as we figure out which topics best fit the interests of the students in the class, and determine how this course can help you develop the skills that are critical if you are to go on in academia (more on this below, see especially the part about ‘chipping’ strategies for reading).
This class will revolve around the psychology and neuroscience of sleep and stress. Both are, for better or worse, involved in most human experiences. For example, sleep plays a role in development at both ends of the age spectrum (and every developmental period in between), and stress can have a dramatic impact on the brain and cognition. Moreover, stress and sleep are themselves related. High levels of stress and anxiety can make it difficult to sleep, and sleep deprivation dramatically elevates the stress hormone cortisol. Consequently, both stress and sleep are involved in development, cognition, and in the prognosis, if not etiology, of many mental health conditions and forms of psychopathology. Because of this, I think that just about any student in our graduate program can apply sleep, stress, or both factors to their area of study, conceptually and/or experimentally.
The goalof this class is threefold. The first goal is to provide you with a basic understanding of the science of sleep, the science of stress, and how the two interact to impact human brain/mind/behavior relationships. That’s my job, and we will spend the first few weeks of class covering that territory to give you a solid foundation on which to build your theoretical and research ideas. The texts will also help in this regard. The second goal is to help you develop an understanding of how your specific area of study overlaps and interacts with sleep and stress. This is largely up to you, and it will inform the articles you assign to the class when it is your turn to present as well as your final project. The third goal is to put all this knowledge together in aliterature review, grant proposal or theoretical paper – one that I hope you will actually use in some way down the road.For instance, you might use it to carve out a unique research niche (or sub research niche) that will help define your programmatic line of research and help you along the path to independence as a researcher, or you might write a paper that views your field of study through a unique lens. This proposal or paper will serve as your final project and will represent 60% of your grade. The other 40% is participation.
Required Texts:
- Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky
- The Promise of Sleep by William Dement
Other readings/articles:
Each week, we will read 2chapters from the texts (a schedule of text readings will be provided shortly), as well as original research papers on topics related to each student’s research area. Over the first two weeks, I will be responsible for all readings, which will be emailed to you. Thereafter, you will take turns choosing the readings for class, based on your independent research interests. Please aim to find at least 2 (depending on length) high quality articles for the class to read each week.These papers should be closely related to your research interests. Ideally, one of these papers should be a review and the others should be empirical.If one of them touches on sleep or stress, even better. However, I recognize that such papers may not yet exist (which may be a good thing in terms of an under investigated research area!). When it is your turn, please disseminate the articles to the class via email at least 1 week in advance.
Tips for Reading:
There is a lot of reading in this class. Because of this, I would like you to commit to the practice of ‘chipping’. We’ll talk more about this throughout the semester, but basically this requires developing a habit of reading a little bit each and every day (or at least every work-week day). Suffice it to say that this, along with learning basic emotion regulation techniques, is the single most important key to success in academia (or in any endeavor, for that matter) in my opinion.
Course Requirements and Structure:
“Student-driven” means that you will determine the specific content of the class. Depending on the complexion of students making up the class in any given semester, the readings are likely to differ greatly. One semester might focus heavily on clinical issues and psychopathology, while a different semester might focus more on cognitive or developmental factors. It all depends on who’s in the class and what your research interests are. You might be wondering why you’d want to spend your time and effort reading about other students’ areas of research interest, so let me say a few things about that here. First, while the main goal of this class is for you to apply sleep and stress to your own research enterprise, it is equally important that you to see how these factors impact virtually all aspects of the human condition. This is the necessary “breadth” part of any graduate class worth taking. Second, gaining insight and exposure to a wide range of ideas and research areas is indescribably beneficial to your creativity, to your present and future ability to foster interesting collaborations, and to your ability to recognize areas of overlap between fields that you may never have seen otherwise. As the scientific process continues to become increasingly collaborative, and as the silo mentality breaks down and people recognize that the best ideas are often “at the crossroads” of different fields, learning to see these connections is crucial to any meaningful academic career. Finally, given that sleep and stress are ubiquitous in virtually all areas of psychology and neuroscience, this class will give you a good opportunity to draw parallels and see that both factors are often overlooked in many, if not most, areas of research (including, likely, your own!). You’ll come to see this as we make our way through the different topics, and I believe that you’ll easily see the intersections between the other students’ insights about sleep and stress and your own. Because I want everyone to be equally engaged in all topics, I encourage you to come to class each week, not just with the typical (hypothesis, methods, results, implications) comments about the articles, but also with insights about how what you’ve read that week is related to your particular topic of interest. Trust me, it won’t be hard, and I think you’ll find that this class will be useful to everyone.
Throughout the semester, you will spend time researching a topic related to sleep and stress that overlaps with your specificinterests. This process will occur largely on your own time, and you should pursue it at your own pace. Ultimately, you will do a significant amount of research on your own, and this will form the basis of, and provide the references for, your final project. This is the “behind the scenes” part of the class.
The “active” part of the class will occur at our weekly meetings. Herewe will discuss the book chaptersassigned for the week, as well as the research papers emailed to usby the student presenter(s). During class, thatstudent (or student-team) will be responsible for presenting their topic and will be expected to lead class discussion. This will include presenting the articles and engaging the class in a dialogue about their strengths, weaknesses, and especially theirimplications for the student’s developing research ideas. We will spend the first half of each class discussing the research articles, and the second half discussing the book chapters.
Depending on the number of students enrolled, each student will have the opportunity to present at least twice duringthe semester. (A tentative schedule will be made at one of the first meetings, once we determine the class size).
The other students will be expected to thoroughly read the articles and chapters assigned each week and come prepared for in-class discussions. As you might guess, this course relies heavily on participation, and all students are expected to contribute in an intellectually substantial way to class discussions. Participation is defined as a commitment to asking thoughtful questions and offering comments in class.You’ll need to come to class with detailed questions and interesting ideas about the chapters and articles. Each of you needs to engage with the material, critically read the assigned articles, and look for important concepts such as potential confounds in the research, come up with ways to fix or improve upon flaws, offer alternative explanations of findings, offer “future directions” the studies might take (ideas for new experiments or new approaches, etc.), or discuss broader implications of research findings.These skills – critical analysis of research, detection of confounds, eliminating or at least improving upon flaws, seeing connections and implications, and coming up with new ideas for future research are critical skills for yourdevelopment as a scientist.
My role will largely be that of facilitator of student-based, class discussions. I will be responsible for addressing critical topics, insuring that key teaching points in each class are covered, answering questions, and keeping class discussions on track through a Socratic-style teaching method that is meant to encourage scientific thinking and exchange of ideas.
You will be pleased to know that there will be no thought papers or other weekly assignments for this class. Your only tasks are to read the class materials and to pursue your research ideas, both in and outside of this course. Don’t make me regret this! Be sure to come to class prepared for a top-notch discussion each week, and make sure you’re steadily making progress toward your final project. For the sake of accountability and to ensure that you don’t get lost in the process, I will meet with each of you in person once or twice during the semester. This will be your opportunity to share with me the articles you’ve found, to ask questions, and to run ideas by me for your final project. It’s your job to email me and schedule the meetings when you’re ready.
The final project will require you to incorporate both sleep and stress into your understanding of your own research area, and to produce evidence of this in a 20-page (approximately) research paper or grant proposal. I will be sure to provide you with compelling examples of both types of documents.
Prerequisites:
The Sleeping Brain, Dr. Wirth’s Stress Seminar, Introduction to Biopsychology, or Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience is recommended but not required.
Grading:
The grading breakdown is as follows: 60% final paper and40% participation.Grades for the course will be calculated on the following scale:
Grade Percent Grade Percent
A94-100%C72-77%
A-90-93%C-70-71%
B+88-89%D+68-69%
B82-87%D62-67%
B-80-81%D-60-61%
C+78-79% F0-59%
Instructions for Completing Assignments:
Participation:
Class participation isdefined as student commitment to asking questions and offering comments in class. Each student is expected to express his or her views on the topic in class and ask several substantive questions or make several substantive commentsduring the class discussion. Participation doesn’t come easily to everyone, and while it can be scary at first, it is an essential skill to learn. You will start to learn it here in a warm and supportive environment. No question will be considered stupid or silly!
Presentations/Class Discussions:
In addition to class participation and learning about the science of sleep and stress, this seminar puts heavy emphasis on honing your critical thinking skills. This requires the development of several generalizable abilities, including critical reading, the ability to pick out confounds in the research but also identify strengths, suggest ideas for improvements on study design or problem conceptualization, and see broader implications of the research for science and society. To help you develop these skills, each in-class discussion should answer the following questions about the empirical articles: 1) What did the researchers do? (Hypothesis), 2) How did they do it? (Methodology), 3) What did they find? (Results – note that you do not have to fully describe or understand statistical analysis techniques), and 4) What does it mean? (what the authors think it means, and, if you think differently, what you think it means). Most of the time, we will read at least two articles, and when this is the case I would also like you to synthesize the two papers. Are the results in agreement or not? If not, which paper do you think is better and why? In addition, it is critical that you go beyond these simple steps and broaden your thinking by speculating about interesting connections that may have come to mind while reading the papers, how they relate to other articles we have read in class or to other studies or phenomena that pertain to your specific research area. Keep these ideas in mind when you consider your discussion points for each class.
Final papers:
Choose a topic that is closely related to your independent line of research and find out how it intersects with sleep and stress. Write a 20-page (approximately) research paper or grant proposal on this topic, drawing on the review articles and primary literature you find and read throughout the semester. You will be expected to explore your topic in depth appropriate for a graduate level review paper, and produce a project that could eventually be submitted to a funding agency or submitted to a good review journal in your field.
A couple of good databases to use to search for articles:
1) PubMed – or
*Full text of articles may only be available when searching through ND library website.
2) PsycINFO – access via ND library website. ( , click on “databases” tab and search for PsycINFO.)
3) Google Scholar (searches all databases at once, which is particularly useful for finding articles at the cross section of psychology and neuroscience.
Final papers (for everybody) are dueon the 1stday of the final exam period. Late papers will not be accepted.
Absence Policy
There is no formal absence policy. Note: To accommodate travel schedules and unanticipated emergencies, you may fail to attend ONE class without penalty. However, should this occur, you should send a brief list of discussion points and questions relevant to the readings for the week. The class will discuss those points in your absence.
Holidays and Special Needs:
Please let me know at the beginning of the semester if you will have to miss a class or reschedule an assignment due to a religious holiday. The more notice I am given, the more likely it is that I can accommodate your needs.Please also feel free to let me know at the beginning of the semester if you have a disability or special needs in the classroom. I will work with the University to find solutions for you.
Tentative Course Schedule:
I will email you the reading schedule for the two texts.
Academic Integrity:
You know the deal. Hopefully it goes without saying that plagiarism, etc., is grounds for failure and other penalties. Please refer to the Academic Code of the Graduate School, and see section 5.8.
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