ABC Summer School 2023

Course manual 2022/2023

Course content

Emotional memories are central to our personal history and identity. In the broadest sense, emotional memory can be considered an affect-laden mental representation of one or multiple experiences. Such mental representations can profoundly influence how we live our life: they can for instance direct our predispositions, habits, beliefs and goal-directed behaviour, as well as drive automatic physiological responses to environmental cues. Scientific interest in the ways memories develop is over a century old, and early theories already assumed emotional memory to lie at the root of various psychological disorders. However, only recent advances in cutting-edge experimental techniques have allowed scientists to study how memories are represented in the brain, finally starting to provide answers to fundamental and enigmatic questions that were previously impossible to investigate. Numerous new insights into the dynamic nature of memory have not only changed our conceptualization of memory and revealed far-reaching consequences for behaviour, they have also generated new hypotheses regarding ways in which memories can be modified, inspiring innovative treatments for a broad range of affective disorders.

The aim of the summer school is to provide students with an in-depth overview of research on both the functional and dysfunctional aspects of memory, and emotional memory in particular. State-of-the-art approaches to studying (emotional) memory will be highlighted from multiple disciplines, most notably fundamental neuroscience, and affective, computational and clinical science. A number of key themes will be covered such as the neurobiological and cognitive mechanisms underlying the formation and recall of (intrusive) memories of distressing events, fear-conditioning, and the plasticity of emotional memory, with implications for memory modification.

At the end of the summer school, you will be familiarized with the most important experimental models of emotional memory and how they might contribute to insight in the aetiology and maintenance of psychiatric disorders such as anxiety disorders and posttraumatic stress disorder.

Objectives

• Write a research proposal that integrates theories and/or methods from different subfields within brain and cognitive sciences
• Create a clear conference contribution detailing experimental design or argumentative structure
• Synthesize different disciplinary approaches to emotional memory

Teaching methods

• Lecture
• Seminar
• Computer lab session/practical training
• Presentation/symposium
• Working independently on e.g. a project or thesis
• Supervision/feedback meeting

Learning activities

Attendance

Requirements of the programme concerning attendance (OER-B):

1. In the case of practicals, the student must attend at least 80%. Should the student attend less than 80%, he/she must redo the practical, or the Examinations Board may have one or more supplementary assignments issued.
2. In the case of study-group sessions with assignments, the student must attend at least 80% of the study-group sessions. Should the student attend less than 80%, he/she must redo the study group, or the Examinations Board may have one or more supplementary assignments issued.

Additional requirements for this course:

An additional attendance requirement for this course is that students should report any expected absence to their seminar teacher (tutor) and to their project group.

Assessment

The poster submitted to the closing symposium is the basis for assessment. A grading rubric for this assignment is available via Canvas.

Inspection of assessed work

Students are invited to make an appointment with their tutor if they wish to discuss their assessment.

A meeting with the tutor must be planned within a week after receiving the assessment result.

Assignments

Students form groups to prepare a conference poster. On the road to this final product, students will need to reach specific milestones (e.g. formulating a research question, proposing a design, drafting a poster). These milestones receive feedback. The conference poster presentation is assessed numerically for informative purposes: the final grade of the course is pass/fail.

Fraud and plagiarism

The 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' applies to this course. This will be monitored carefully. Upon suspicion of fraud or plagiarism the Examinations Board of the programme will be informed. For the 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' see: www.student.uva.nl

Course structure

Timetable

The schedule for this course is published on DataNose.

Last year's student feedback

In order to provide students some insight how we use the feedback of student feedback to enhance the quality of education, we decided to include the table below in all course guides.

Contact information

Coordinator

• Vincent Tijms

For questions about the Summer School, please contact summerschool-iis@uva.nl.

Staff

• dr. Vanessa van Ast v.a.vanast@uva.nl
• dr. Renée Visser r.m.visser@uva.nl
• dr. Harm Krugers h.krugers@uva.nl