Neuroscience 312 - Seminar in Neuroscience: Experience and the Plastic Brain

Topics course: “Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind”. This line from Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides raises a fundamental question in neuroscience: how does experience shape our brain and behavior? In this seminar, students will explore the molecular, physiological, and behavioral mechanisms of “critical periods”: temporary epochs across development characterized by heightened experience-dependent neural plasticity. Discussions will focus on how early life experience shapes neural circuits involved in vision, communication, and navigation. Permission from the instructor required. Suggested prerequisites: NSC 210, NSC 230, BIO 300, or BIO 310, as well as a course in statistics. Enrollment limit of 12.

Instructor Permission. Not open to first-years, sophomores