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Every Neuroscience concentrator completes a senior project, and there are many other opportunities for student involvement in research through courses, independent study, the Senior Fellowship Program, and summer research assistantships.
Recently, Neuroscience concentrators have investigated the tactile sensitivity in women as a function of stage of the menstrual cycle to psychophysiological studies of autonomic nervous system correlates of personality characteristics. Other studies with animal subjects have addressed behavioral effects of adenosine receptor stimulation in the midbrain, effects of electrical stimulation of the frontal cortex on neuronal activity in other areas of the brain, immunocytochemical studies of neuropeptide localization, and psychopharmacological studies of learning and memory in neonates. Cell and molecular studies have included the molecular analysis of neurotransmitter synthetic enzymes, characterization of neuropeptides, and the study of neurotransmitter receptor development. Students are often coauthors of published research, either from their senior project work or from summer research with faculty members. They have been coauthors of papers presented at national meetings and published in journals such as Behavioral Neuroscience, Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Perception and Psychophysics, Journal of Experimental Zoology, Brain and Language, and Behavioral and Neural Biology.