Feeding the Brain: Diet and Metabolism

Course Description

For a long time, brain metabolism is known to be important in regulating various brain functions and when perturbed, can lead to various diseases like epilepsy and neurodegenerative diseases. Understanding of this process is important as this has direct relevance to our daily life, particularly with regards to our diet management. Recently, there is increasing popularity in fad diet such as ketogenic diet, which has direct influence towards brain metabolism. This is largely due to increased accessibility to scientific information through unreviewed means like social media. This course will explore the influence of diet on brain metabolism and introduce the skills necessary to evaluate and critically appraise popular scientific literature.

The course will start by introducing basic concepts in neuroscience like what is the nervous system, what neurons and glias are; how do they convey information, and how they manifest in meaningful behaviour. This will be done through pre-readings, short lectures, and interactive activities to place the concepts in context. We will then gradually move to discussing basic metabolism principles such as mitochondria, respiration, and oxidative phosphorylation. Again, this will be done through the same approach.

We will then move to explore some of the techniques used in neuroscience research. Basic introductions on some of the common techniques such as histology and metabolic measurement will be introduced at the beginning but as the course covers the influence of different diets, relevant techniques with respect to the discussion of that topic will be introduced as we go along.

The main portion of the course will discuss the effect of various popular diet on brain metabolism. Some of the diets that will be discussed in this course are blueberry intake, ketogenic diet, and diabetic diet; all of which are known to change the brain metabolism in some way or the other. In discussing the effect of these diets, information will be extracted from both popular and scientific literature or articles and critical appraisal of these literatures will be discussed. At the end of the course, students will be assigned to review a particular diet and will explore popular and scientific literatures to investigate the influence of this diet on brain metabolism. Students will then be asked to present their findings in front of the group and receive constructive criticism on their literature appraisal and presentation skills. Throughout the course, students will be supported by the instructor in all aspects of this process.

Students will take away basic neuroscience knowledge and concepts from this course, especially pertaining brain metabolism. More specifically, they will learn how diet can influence brain metabolism and subsequently, behavior or brain diseases. Students will also acquire transferable skills such as critical appraisal of popular scientific literatures, presentation skills, and discussion in a group. Successful completion of this course will equip the student very well towards embarking on a neuroscience course in the college and as such are particularly suitable for students that are interested in this field.

Prerequisites: Basic biology and neuroscience knowledge would help the students participate actively in the course. Additionally, basic chemistry, organic chemistry, and biochemistry knowledge would help. Proficient command of the English language and understanding of ways to conduct an internet search of literature is expected.