Program Description

Lance Kriegsfeld Acting Area Head

The Behavioral Neuroscience area encompasses faculty and students united by a common interest in the neurobiological/physiological bases of behavior, including but not limited to circadian and seasonal rhythms, sex differentiation and behavior, energy balance, bird song and animal communication, animal spatial orientation and navigation, gene-environment interactions, selective attention and visual perception, social behavior, attachment, developmental processes, physiological substrates of emotion and stress, biological substrates of human motivation, localization of human brain function using fMRI. The methodologies currently employed by faculty and students cover the entire spectrum from non invasive study of animals and humans to computational, cellular, molecular and neuroimaging analyses.

Researchers in the program provide training in a variety of modern behavioral, cellular and molecular, neuroanatomical, and neurobiological techniques necessary to approach questions of interest using animal and human model systems. Avai lable methodologies include: electrophysiology, ERP, fMRI, immunohistochemistry, in situ hybridization, autoradiography, radioimmunoassay, tract tracing, central and peripheral pharmacological manipulations, lesioning and targeted gene knockout approaches, protein and mRNA detection/quantification, quantitative RT-PCR, and high throughput and targeted genetic screening.

Programs in Behavioral Neuroscience focus on animal behavior, sensory physiology, biological rhythyms, and ethological approaches. Research programs in this area are extensively integrated with those involving human research. Areas of specialty within this track include:

Hormones and Behavior

Sensory Systems

Neural Basis of Learning and Memory

Neuroethology

Curriculum

All students in the Behavioral Neuroscience program will be required to take a proseminar course providing a broad overview of topics in systems-level neuroscience. Students will also enroll in an additional one semester proseminar in the Psychology department or a suitable substitute in another department, plus 4 seminars in the Psychology department over the course of their graduate careers. They will also be required to fulfill the statistics, professional development and teaching courses (the latter required for GSIs), attend the colloquium series, and complete a second year project. Behavioral neuroscience students typically take advantage of the many relevant course offerings in several other department on campus.

Faculty

Core BN Faculty

De Valois, Karen	Professor	Vision, psychophysics, and physiology
Francis, Darlene	Assistant Professor	Behavioral neuroscience, developmental psychobiology, animal models, stress, maternal care, gene-environment interaction
Gallant, Jack	Associate Professor	Visual neuroscience, attention
Glickman, Stephen	Professor	Comparative studies of species characteristic behavior patterns in mammals
Kriegsfeld, Lance	Assistant Professor	Behavioral neuroendocrinology, circadian biology, reproductive behavior and physiology, seasonality/photoperiodism, behavioral genetics, behavioral neuroscience
Zucker, Irving	Professor	Biological rhythms; seasonal reproductive cycles; photoperiodism; energy balance; endocrinology, hibernation, temperature regulation