Here is a list of four essential things that you should know if you are considering doing neuroscience research this semester at Hopkins.
1. The Hopkins neuroscience department was one of the first neuroscience departments established in the country. It’s true. Named after its founder, the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience was established in 1980. Many important neuroscience discoveries have come out of this department, such as the discovery of opiate receptors in the brain.
The point here is that our neuroscience department has historically been and is still one of the strongest basic science departments in the world. If you came to Hopkins to do neuroscience research, you have indeed come to the right place.
2. Neuroscience is not all about the brain: The word “neuroscience” typically conjures up images of the mysterious brain. The brain is definitely the least understood organ in the human body, and much of neuroscience research is focused on understanding how the brain works.
However, you need to remember that neuroscience is really ultimately about the nervous system, which also includes non-brain parts such as the spinal cord and autonomic nerves.
While the brain is thought to be the center where most of your information is processed and your human consciousness arises, the non-brain parts are also needed to sense outside input and deliver this information to the brain.
The brain also exerts control over the non-brain parts to carry out behavioral and physiological responses to an outside stimulus, such as telling motor neurons in the spinal cord to fire in a certain way so that you can catch a moving ball.
3. There are three main branches of neuroscience: These branches are cellular and molecular neuroscience, systems neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience.
As implied by the name, cellular and molecular neuroscience looks at the nervous system at the microscopic level. When you think of drugs and how they interact with the brain through specific chemical receptors, you are mostly thinking about cellular and molecular neuroscience. If you like cellular and molecular biology, you will probably enjoy cellular and molecular neuroscience.
Systems neuroscience is concerned with how neurons are wired together and how activity within this neural wiring leads to function. The term “neural circuit” is most often associated with this field of neuroscience. You might like systems neuroscience if you like studying anatomy. Systems neuroscience has also attracted mathematicians and physicists who employ their computational tools to decode the logic of neural activity.
Cognitive neuroscience focuses on how mental processes are computed by the brain. Much of cognitive neuroscience research involves making human subjects do a variety of mental tasks, such as memorizing a list of numbers, and then imaging the subjects’ brain activity while they perform the task.
4. Taking the Nervous System I and II courses will help tremendously. Nervous System I and II, taught by Stewart Hendry and Haiqing Zhao, are some of the best courses any Hopkins student can take, period. This is especially true for aspiring neuroscientists. These courses cover all the fundamental knowledge you need to go into any field of neuroscience. Moreover Hendry and Zhao are amazing professors.
