Neuroscience is one of the most exciting and rapidly developing areas of science right now. While many different scientific disciplines study the nervous system (biology, chemistry, physics, computer science, etc.), this course is an introduction to the biology of the nervous system. Specifically, we will take a systems neuroscience approach. While Neuroscience 1 focuses on neurons, molecules, and synapses, in Neuroscience 2, we will learn how these elements work together to give rise to complex functions like sensation, perception, and movement.

 

This course examines hormonal processes and the neuroendocrine systems that regulate behavior in human and non-human animals. We will integrate multiple levels of biological organization, from molecules to organisms, to understand interactions among hormones, the nervous system, behavior, and the environment. Hormones are a critically important mechanism for integrating internal physiological state with the environment to generate behavior across diverse species. Understanding these hormonal mechanisms, and the behaviors they regulate, has broad consequences for individuals, health and medicine, society, and evolution. For example, foundational knowledge of behavioral neuroendocrinology is directly relevant to understanding hormone-sensitive cancers and their treatments, the long-term impacts of early-life stress/trauma, reproductive health, gender and sex, endocrine disruptors, as well as our own behavior.

 

In Foundations of Neuroscience, students (neuroscience majors, other STEM majors, and non-STEM majors) take part in modules including Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, History and Philosophy of Neuroscience, Neuropharmacology, and Computational Neuroscience. In the Cellular and Molecular module, we learn about the anatomy of neurons (and glia), properties of cell membranes, the equations that describe the electrical properties of neurons, action potentials, and neurotransmitter release. We also learn about the foundational and cutting-edge modern experiments through which we gained this knowledge. In the labs, we do electrophysiology and electromyography, two key techniques in the study of cellular and molecular neuroscience.

 

In this general education (non-STEM majors) course, we ask why do animals—human and non-human—behave the ways they do? This is a central question to many disciplines, and we learn how neurobiologists work to answer this question. Neurobiology is one of the most exciting and rapidly developing areas of science right now. There are also many different scientific disciplines study the nervous system (biology, chemistry, physics, computer science, etc.), this course takes a biological approach to studying the nervous system and animal behavior. We learn about behavioral model systems, fundamental principles underlying neuronal function, and some basic methods used by neurobiologists to study neuron function in the context of defined behaviors.

 

In this general education (non-STEM majors) course, we examine hormones as a critically important mechanism for integrating internal physiologicalstate with the environment to generate behavior across diverse species. We examine the reciprocal ways that hormones regulate behavior and behavior regulates hormones in human and non-human animals. To do this, we will focus on interactions among hormones, the nervous system, animal behavior, and the environment. Understanding hormone-behavior interactions is also highly relevant to our lived experiences (e.g., sex/gender, sleep, stress), health and wellbeing (e.g., affective disorders, birth control, hormone-based cancers), and current events (e.g., trans rights, reproductive rights, environmental movements).Topics in class and the laboratory can include gonadal determination and differentiation, biological rhythms, reproductive behavior, parenting, social interactions, stress, environmental endocrine disruptors, and affective disorders.

 

This is a seminar course in which we will read current papers in behavioral neuroscience, neuroendocrinology, and behavioral endocrinology. These fields are quite broad, using a range of model systems, scientific techniques, and statistical analyses to answer fascinating questions. Together, we will dissect these papers to understand what the authors did, why they did it, what they found, and what we think about it.