Becoming a Brain Scientist: Neuroscience and Psychology Research

How do scientists study the brain, behavior, cognition, and learning? This course is an introduction to how psychologists and neuroscientists formulate hypotheses, design experiments, and collect and analyze data to learn about nervous system and brain functioning, brain disorders and disease, learning, and behavior.

Each student is matched with a research mentor in a Harvard laboratory.

Students spend approximately ten hours per week on a project related to the lab's research.

In addition, all students meet weekly as a group to explore topics of interest to researchers in biological science, neuroscience, and psychology, including finding and reading primary research articles, scientific methods, research ethics and human subjects' protection, and science communication.

Students read both literature specific to their lab experience as well as more general material on research methods and experimental design.

Host laboratories are selected by the course and conduct research in a wide variety of areas, which may include neuroscience, cognition, brain disorders and disease, mental disorders, molecular neuroscience, and animal behavior.