Physiologie animale II [SVETB228]

Learning outcomes

This course of Animal Physiology II aims to provide you with the theorical knowledge and practical capacities, in order to transfer them in practise, targeting specific systems: the digestive tract and the endocrine system.

New theorical and practical learnings of animal physiology II are built on previous fundamentals of chemistry, histology, anatomy as well as splanchnology. Mastering those basics in morphology and sciences is therefore essential to better understand the mechanisms described for the digestive and endocrine system during pedagogical activities of animal physiology II. You will be stimulated to integrate your learnings of the targeted systems in physiological and pathological context. By all the learning activities, the teaching team aims to help you to have an overview of the living animal, and to connect those learnings to basic sciences and to further clinical practice in vet master.

Objectives

Pedagogical activities aim you to reach those objectives:

• Describe and understand the digestive function, and mechanisms transforming the food into nutrients, and to detail the fate of each nutrient after absorption.
• Describe regulation of secretion and peristalsis of the digestive tract.
• Describe the mechanisms associated to the endocrine system (path, stimuli, responses)
• Transfer the above knowledge to most important clinical situation and / or to the digestion of specific food in various species.
• Understand and explain interactions between systems in common clinical cases.
• Perform basic exams to investigate endocrine and digestive systems.
• Interpret results of the forementioned exams, and identify the specific mechanisms (physiology or altered)

Learning activities targeting the endocrine and digestive systems aim to link physiological concepts and the body systems (digestive, endocrine, cardio-vascular, respiratory). This is a nice introduction to your future courses in internal medicine and nutrition.

Content

This course adds new knowledge and competencies to the Animal Physiology I (cellular, cardio-vascular and respiratory), by introducing you to the physiology of the endocrine and digestive systems.

Lectures aim to provide you with the functions of the different part of the digestive tract, with focus on the digestion of food (from food to nutrient and use). Regulatory mechanisms are developed in the endocrine-targeted courses. Various learning activities will enable you to understand theorical concepts and to link them to practical activities (either in the university, or in your future curriculum in master). This link is important for your long-lasting learning of the animal physiology.

Table of contents

Physiology of the digestive tract

Basics of the digestive tract

Ingestion

Gastro-intestinal system : regulation and motility

Physiology of the stomach

Physiology of the small intestine

Physiology of the colon

Rectum and continency

From food to nutrient

Absorption

New born specificities

(non) Ruminants specificities

Birds

Physiology of the endocrine system

Basics

Feedback concept

Hypothalamus, pituitary, and….

Thyroïd gland

Adrenal glands

Pancreas

Liver

Endocrinology of the reproductive tract

Applied physiology

Physiological responses to pathological mechanisms

Integrated view of the digestive and endocrine systems

Exercises description

Activities (called, in French, travaux dirigés et travaux pratiques) include learning practical handling of animals to specifically investigate digestive/endocrine systems, working on clinical cases during seminars, stimulating reminiscence of learning and transferring them to professional situations, but also connecting learning of different systems.

Activities will also be the opportunity for you to exercise your soft skills, organization, communication, presentation (oral, written), as well as animal handling and clinical exam.