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Program in
Neuroscience

Neuroscience 3863/3864: Advanced Research in Neuroscience

The purpose of the Advanced Research in Neuroscience course is to provide students who have developed the technical and conceptual skills to conduct laboratory research an opportunity to continue and expand upon their research experience. Students work in the laboratory of a member of the neuroscience faculty at Vanderbilt and are expected to provide independent contributions to the design and execution of the research project.

IMPORTANT: To register for research credit, you must begin your contract by the end of the second day of classes. Because the contract and registration process take time, the link to initiate a research contract will close at the end of the second day of classes and registrations will not be accepted after that time. Please plan ahead. We encourage students to meet with potential mentors and obtain an agreement on doing research for credit before classes begin.

Prerequisites

Completion of NSC 3861 and NSC 3862 is a prerequisite for NSC 3863. Completion of NSC 3863 is a prerequisite for NSC 3864. NSC 3864 may be repeated for credit.

Selecting a Research Mentor

You will select a mentor from the list of faculty approved to mentor neuroscience students. Generally, it is expected that you will continue research in the laboratory in which NSC 3861 and NSC 3862 were completed, but it is not required.

If you are interested in working with a faculty member who is not already approved to mentor students but conducts neuroscience research, you must first get permission from the director of independent studies. The faculty member must then agree that they are willing to direct your research for these courses.

Application and Registration

  • Read the course structure and requirements.
  • Research Contract: Initiate your research proposal and complete the survey in its entirety. This will serve as your research contract. Once submitted, the information will require two approvals: first by your mentor and second by our director of independent studies. If approved by both parties, the information will be routed to the program office for registration. You will be notified after each step is completed and will also be notified once enrolled.
  • Inform your mentor that a REDCap link will be sent to their email and will require action.

A new contract is required for each semester you register, and you will not be able to register yourself. If after following all guidelines you still have questions, contact the program office.

IMPORTANT: To register for research credit, you must begin your contract by the end of the second day of classes. Because the contract and registration process take time, the link to initiate a research contract will close at the end of the 2nd day of classes and registrations will not be accepted after that time. Please plan ahead. We encourage students to meet with potential mentors and obtain an agreement on doing research for credit before classes begin.

Course Structure and Requirements

Once you have been admitted to NSC 3863/3864, your primary interactions during the semester will be with your faculty mentor and members of the mentor’s laboratory. You are expected to spend 12-15 hours per week in laboratory or doing library work for this course during the academic year and 18-20 hours per week in the summer session.

Requirements

1. Final written report: All students are required to write a final paper that summarizes the research accomplished throughout your tenure in the lab. In most cases, this paper will be a revision/extension of the paper you wrote for NSC 3862 (or NSC 3863 if you are in NSC 3864). In that case, you should treat the earlier paper as a draft, and the goal should not be to rewrite the entire paper but to significantly improve on the quality of the writing and scholarship that went into the earlier paper while adding in new data/results/interpretations that emerged from your work during the semester.

The paper should be modeled after a typical scientific journal article and include the following sections:

  • Introduction/Background
  • Methods
  • Results
  • Discussion

The document should be no more than 20 double-spaced pages with 1-inch margins, and in 12pt Times or equivalently clear font. Figures and tables should be embedded within the document and all figures must be accompanied by figure legends. A list of cited references should be included at the end of the paper. The references do not have to fit into the page limit.

The expectation is that you will have read previous papers on the topic of your research and understand the reasoning that led to your research effort. You should also express an understanding of the hypotheses and methods on which your lab efforts were based. In all, you should be able to demonstrate:

  • an understanding of fundamental principles and concepts of neuroscience,
  • an ability to think critically,
  • an ability to organize and communicate conceptual and factual information, and;
  • a depth of knowledge in the area of the research project.

The introduction to the paper should include a discussion of the neuroscience background and significance of the work. If the results warrant statistical treatment, the analytic methods should be included or referenced and wherever appropriate, it is expected to provide the statistical test (such as T-value, F-value, R-value); if a statistical test cannot be provided, include a section explaining what the appropriate test would be and why it was not performed (for instance, the sample size was too small). The discussion should be focused narrowly on the results and their interpretation. Please contact the program office if you have questions about the organization and style of the paper.

2. Oral presentation: You will also be expected to give an oral presentation of your research to the members of the laboratory. This presentation will be evaluated by your research mentor and will contribute to the assessment of your final grade.

Grades

The paper is due on the last day of class. There will be a deduction of one letter grade on papers received after the deadline. Copies should be submitted to the program through Brightspace AND to your faculty mentor. The paper will be graded by the faculty mentor, who will submit a recommendation for a final grade to the program office within one week of the due date.