Piattaforma Kiro - Didattica Curriculare 3+2 e Lauree Magistrali Ciclo Unico

Enzimologia Generale (3 CFU)

Rapporto struttura/funzione degli enzimi. Modello chiave-serratura e dell’adattamento indotto. Il sito attivo: studio con marcatura covalente e di affinità; doppia marcatura; quasi substrati; inibitori suicidi. Strategie catalitiche: catalisi per prossimità, orientamento, distorsione, covalente, acido-base specifica e generale. Struttura e meccanismo d’azione di alcuni enzimi: lisozima, glutatione reduttasi, chimotripsina. Misura del legame con il substrato. Cinetica enzimatica secondo Michaelis - Menten: misura della velocità di reazione (Vo). Stato stazionario; legge della velocità, misura e significato dei valori di Km e Vmax; metodo di Lineweaver e Burk; cinetica dell’inibizione competitiva e non competitiva. Regolazione dell’attività: effetto del pH, temperatura, enzimi allosterici: modelli di simmetria e sequenziale; effetti omotropi ed eterotropi. Isoenzimi

Laboratorio di Enzimologia Applicata (3 CFU)

Principali metodi e tecniche per l'estrazione, purificazione e caratterizzazione degli enzimi. L’esperienza consiste nella purificazione di una proteina enzimatica a partire da un estratto cellulare grezzo e nella successiva caratterizzazione e valutazione del comportamento cinetico dell’enzima. Verranno trattati: preparazione di soluzioni tampone per sistemi biologici e misurazione del pH; tecniche cromatografiche per la separazione di proteine; spettrofotometria; centrifugazione; elettroforesi di proteine; saggi di attività enzimatica; principi di quantificazione dei parametri cinetici di enzimi. Il presente modulo ha l’obiettivo di fornire allo studente le informazioni e le competenze necessarie per avvicinarsi allo studio degli enzimi e per comprendere a fondo le potenzialità della catalisi enzimatica nelle applicazioni mediche e industriali. Durante le esercitazioni verranno richiamate le basi teoriche delle tecniche adottate.

Modulo 2 dell'Insegnamento Chimica del Riconoscimento Molecolare (CRM)

Corso di Nanomateriali e applicazioni farmaceutiche. Il modulo 1, tenuto dal prof. Dacarro, è dedicato ai nanomateriali inorganici. 

The main goal of this course is to illustrate the diversity of experimental approaches employed to study different aspects of cognition, such as memory and attention. This course will also elucidate how the assumptions made by cognitive researchers are reflected in their experimental methods.
From a more practical standpoint, the course aims at offering a wide understanding of the experimental designs of classic reaction time paradigms in psychology. In addition to this, there will also be dedicated moments in which the students will have a direct grasp on designing and programming computerized experiments, as well as analyzing and interpreting the relative data.

The Neurobiology of Memory course aims to provide a detailed knowledge of memory systems at different levels: from molecular and neurobiological bases to cognitive models. The clinical conditions affecting the different memory systems and the specific neuropsychological tools to investigate their alterations will also be illustrated. The course is based on lectures, videos, discussion of clinical cases and discussion of scientific articles.

The course aims at offering knowledge in the field of psycho- and neurolinguistic studies applied to the pragmatic aspects of the communicative competence. Specifically, the course aims at offering knowledge about the processes at stake in human communication, their neural basis and their disruption in pathological conditions. The course is targeted for students with specific interests in psychology and cognitive neuroscience of language, as well as for students who wish to acquire greater awareness of the role of communicative competence in relation to other cognitive functions. 

The course combines notions in linguistics, psychology and cognitive neuroscience, with special attention to the emerging fields of experimental pragmatics, clinical pragmatics and neuropragmatics. 

Part of the lessons will be devoted to explain what pragmatic competence means, presenting it with respect to the other language components. Special attention will be paid to the description of the inferential processes that support the understanding of metaphors, irony and other non-literal expressions. 

The core part of the course will deal with the neural correlates of pragmatic competence, describing research with neuroimaging and electrophysiological methods. We will discuss the main brain regions and networks elicited by pragmatic tasks and how the electrophysiological response unfolds during the comprehension of discourse and non-literal meanings. 

The last part of the course will focus on pragmatic language disorder, describing the communicative difficulties that might occur in schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder and various neurological conditions. The course will describe the main symptoms of pragmatic language disorder, such as concretism and off-topic speech, as well as the available assessment tools. Finally, the relation between pragmatics and other cognitive components, such as theory of mind and executive functions, will be discussed. 

This course has the aim of providing a comprehensive understanding of the basis of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) methods used in the neuroscience field. The course will start from the main concepts of MRI Physics and develop our understanding of the power of MRI to quantify brain structure and function properties in a non-invasive way. 

Indeed, MRI can be used to quantify microstructure characteristics such as neurite density or myelin content, as well as to capture the organisation of white matter fibre bundles (through what we know as tractography). We can also measure the response of the brain to a stimulus and how the brain works across regions through the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) contrast.

Through the weeks students will learn about metabolic imaging and spectroscopy as well as the possibility to measure sodium ions concentration.

Students will also be exposed to the use of such advanced MRI methods in diseases, especially through research projects and articles published in peer reviewed journals.

At the end of the course, the power of MRI should be clear to all together with the need for bright minds to work in this sector to extract its full potentials.