Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

• playground
• brain & behavior
• complex systems
• biology
• science education
• science & culture
• art exhibitions
• about us

Neurobiology and Behavior: A course and a conversation

Neurobiology and Behavior (Bryn Mawr College Biology 202, taught by Paul Grobstein) is a lecture/discussion course aimed at involving students in an ongoing discussion of the prospects and problems of trying to understand behavior in terms of nervous system organization and function. It is a comprehensive treatment neither of research on the nervous system nor of that on behavior but rather a consideration of the relations between the two. As such, it is both appropriate for and attracts students with a variety of different backgrounds and future career plans. As part of the course, students prepare weekly short essays reacting to material of the course and suggesting open questions which require further exploration. Since these essays help both to characterize the current level of understandings of problems in which many people are interested, and to define needed new lines of inquiry, they are made available here. Essays from 1997 are also available

Listed below are weekly questions provided to students to stimulate their thinking. These give a general idea of the topics of the essays for that week, though students were free to write about whatever they happened to have on their minds. Clicking on any question will take you to all of the essays contributed for that week.

• Topic 1: If the brain IS behavior (there isn't anything else), what aspect of behavior will be most difficult to account for

• Topic 2: The nervous system has been equated with an input/output box consisting of interconnected output boxes themselves made of input/output boxes (neurons). If that is all there is, is it less or more likely that the nervous system and behavior are the same thing?

• Topic 3: Most of the conversations in the nervous system are based on action potentials, which are the same in all neurons and can arise spontaneously. Does this make it more or less likely that the nervous system and behavior are the same thing?

• Topic 4: If one is interested in BEHAVIOR, is it really worth spending two weeks studying the properties of individual neurons and synapses?

• Topic 5: What significance do the neurobiological concepts of central pattern generation and corollary discharge have for thinking about behavior?

• Topic 6: The voluntary/involuntary distinction in motor control: where and who am I?

• Topic 7: How close to reality is what one sees, and how come the brain does it that way?

• Topic 8: Thoughts on lateral inhibition, perception and other things. . .

• Topic 9: What would you like to investigate further?

Provided below are the names of all of the students currently enrolled in Biology 202. Click on the topic number next to their name to go directly to their comments for that topic.

Check out the faces behind the commentary in our INTERACTIVE class picture .

For additional exploration of neuro/biological interest. . .

Yahoo's collection of Neurobiology Institutes Worldwide.

Click here for a look inside the brain of The Visual Human at the National Library of Medicine.

This page organized and displayed by Rufus Timberlake.
Comments and questions to rtimberl@brynmawr.edu or pgrobste@brynmawr.edu.

| Forum | Brain and Behavior | Serendip Home |