BA in Neuroscience

Neuroscience is the scientific community's effort to understand the mechanisms that give rise to thoughts, motives, and behavior. The study of the nervous system can be pursued from biological, biochemical and psycho- logical perspectives; as such, neuroscience is a thoroughly interdisciplinary endeavor that blurs the traditional barriers between such specialties. Neuroscientists investigate the connections between events that occur at the subcellular level (molecular genetics and molecular biology), the cellular level (electrophysiology, cell histology), the systems level (developmental biology, neurophysiology, functional anatomy) and the behavior of the whole organism (animal behavior, cognitive psychology). Addressing the fundamental questions of neuroscience thus requires the collaboration of specialists in diverse fields.

The field of neuroscience is relatively new, and we are continually learning surprising aspects of how our brain functions. The faculty at Skidmore are interested in a diverse array of scientific questions, including: how genes regulate biological clocks and activity cycles, how cannabinoids impact adolescent brain development and adult behavior, how gene products guide the development of the spinal cord, how Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases can be understood at the molecular level, and how the two hemispheres of the brain process information differently.