Neuroscience - Hamilton College Clinton

Neuroscience from Hamilton College Clinton is a Campus Bachelor Neuroscience degree that prepares you for a Science career. The Neuroscience Program at Hamilton is operated jointly by the departments of Psychology and Biology, and students in the program explore the fascinating, rapidly changing intersection of those disciplines ? the biological basis of behavior. The brain is our most fascinating and complicated organ. It is the very seat of our identity, and it has been an object of scientific study and speculation for millennia. Contemporary neuroscientists, however, are able to draw on a new generation of technology as well as the scientific methods of biology and chemistry to investigate the behavior-biology link more deeply than ever before. The study of the nervous system has a clear, practical impact on advances in mental and physical health, child development and aging, medicine, education and many other fields. By drawing on a range of research disciplines, neuroscience is also uniquely positioned to demonstrate the ways in which psychology, biology and chemistry intersect with philosophy, mathematics and ? increasingly ? computer science. RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES Research is a constant in the life of a neuroscience major, but it can come in many forms: regular coursework, independent study, the senior project, the Senior Fellowship Program, or collaborative summer research with a faculty member. Such opportunities are available only to graduate students at many other colleges and universities. During a typical summer, more than 70 Hamilton undergraduates collaborate with faculty members on research projects in neuroscience and other fields. Many receive summer research grants funded by the College, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Health and alumni gifts. Students and faculty members often co-author papers that are presented at national conferences and published in leading scholarly journals. In recent years students have published in such journals as Behavioral Neuroscience , Brain and Language, Perception and Psychophysics, Journal of Experimental Zoology and Behavioral and Neural Biology. THE SENIOR PROGRAM As seniors, neuroscience majors carry out a research project that culminates in a thesis and an oral presentation. Working closely with a faculty advisor, each student uses the senior project to synthesize and focus previous coursework. The senior project is an original work of scholarship that provides an in-depth examination of a particular empirical or theoretical issue. Some of the top neuroscience majors each year are selected for the Senior Fellowship Program, in which up to seven Hamilton students undertake a major research project under the supervision of two or more faculty members. Recent senior fellows in neuroscience have studied the neurochemistry of octopamine, patterns of human motion, integration of sensory information by single neurons, evoked potential correlates of cognitive processing, brain mechanisms of reward and tactile psychophysics. RESOURCES Hamilton's Science Center, which houses the neuroscience program through the departments of Psychology and Biology, includes more than 100 teaching and research laboratories and 11 high-tech classrooms as well as state-of-the-art instrumentation. In a recent survey of college administrators, Hamilton was one of only 11 colleges and 28 universities in the nation credited with offering exemplary research opportunities and facilities for undergraduates. Neuroscience students have access to lab facilities for scanning and transmission electron microscopes, tissue culture, analytical neurochemistry, molecular biology, neuroanatomical research, intracellular and extracellular single neuron recording, voltage and patch clamping, eye movement tracking, evoked-potential recording and tactile psychophysics. View more details on Hamilton College . Ask your questions and apply online for this program or find other related Neuroscience courses.