Advice for undergraduates / What neuroscience is about: Vanisha Lakhina

[Vijay]

"Neuroscience" is an umbrella term that includes anything that has to
do with the study of the brain, and that encompasses the following
aspects

1. Brain Function:

a) Cognitive neuroscience - deals with cognition, so studies are done
on humans, and a lot of these are fMRI studies (functional magnetic
resonance imaging), in which u put a person in a brain scanner while
they are performing a particular task.

b) Behavioral neuroscience- deals with how brain circuits contribute
to behavior, these studies are mostly done on rats, mice, zebrafish,
flies and worms. These organisms are used because scientists can
modify their neural circuits and examine how that changes the behavior
of the animal. For ethical reasons, this is not possible in humans.


2. Brain development: examines how neural circuits are built during
development, i.e how neurons are born, how they navigate to the right
area (think about the neuron that sits in your spinal cord, and forms
a connection with the muscle in your foot. Thats a long distance to
travel. How does the neuron achieve this?!). These studies are done on
mice, zebrafish, flies and worms. This is my area of expertise: I work
with zebrafish, and study how the olfactory circuit forms. I examine
which genetic mechanisms are used to connect neurons that are present
in the nose to the neurons in the brain.


3. Cellular neuroscience: Neurons are the basic units of study in
this field, the kind of questions asked are: How does a neuron
generate signals to communicate with other neurons? How are neurons
arranged in a circuit to generate specific patterns of activity?


4. Neurobiology of disease: As the name suggests, this area studies
the etiology of neurological diseases (eg epilepsy, stroke, autism,
schizophrenia, etc), as well as treatments.

So thats what neuroscience broadly deals with. You have probably
noticed already Neuroscience deals with micro-processes (genes,
neurons) that contribute to brain function as well as macro-processes
(thinking, behaving - which is what "Psycholgy" is). What I mean by
that is that depending on what aspect of Neuroscience you are
studying, you might actually be studying Psychology....there is a huge
overlap between the two.

Psychology laboratories study different circuits/different kinds of
mental processes...for example: Memory. Lets look at the kind of labs
that study the process of memory: There could be a lab that examines
memory at the Cognitive level, so they do brain scans of people while
giving them different memory tasks. There could be a different lab
that studies which genes are involved in memory formation, and this
lab studies this in mice. The advantage of using mice is that you can
genetically modify them to carry mutations in various genes, and see
whether a mutant mouse is capable of remembering things. Both these
labs can technically be in either Neuroscience or Psychology
departments at a given institution. Both these labs also will have
students from both Psychlogy and Neuroscience programs. But both these
labs do VERY DIFFERENT kinds of research.

My general advice to you would be to not restrict yourself to any
given area within Neuroscience/Psychology at the undergraduate level,
since you don't really know what you will like to do in the long term.
Typically people come into Neuroscience thinking that they will study
behavior. After a while, some will discover, for example, how amazing
a neuron is, and quickly shift gears into Cellular neuroscience. So at
your stage, I would recommend taking broader based classes,
understanding the different aspects of Neuroscience, and then making a
well informed decision about what to major in.

Neuroscience PhDs typically end up in academia, so they would become
Neuroscientists and have a lab of their own. A few go into the pharma/
biotech industry, while others get consulting jobs. There are other
"non-traditional" jobs like science policy, medical writing, patent
law.

People who do Neuroscience at the undergrad level either go to Med
school, or to grad school for a PhD. Theres not much sense in a
Masters in this field, because unlike Biotech, people dont get
industry jobs without a PhD. In fact, my university, the University of
Pennsylvania, doesnt even offer a Masters in Neuroscience.

Cognitive Neuro is actually very math based, so I would be surprised
if a general biology program would have a physics/math requirement,
and a cognitive neuro program would not. In fact, I would be surprised
if theres too much difference in requirements between Neuro and Psych
majors. You should check that out before deciding on which major you
want to gear yourself towards.