Behavioral Neuroscience Research

Program Overview

The Behavioral Neuroscience area offers a course of study in neuroanatomical, neurochemical, neurophysiological, and neurocomputational aspects of brain functions as they relate to various behavioral and cognitive processes.

Specific faculty research interests include learning and memory (e.g., taste, fear, eyeblink conditioning; multiple memory systems), motivation (e.g., drinking, feeding, stress), spatial cognition (e.g., place, head direction cells), development and sensory processing (e.g., audition, vision).

The Behavioral Neuroscience graduate program has close links with other areas in the Psychology Department, especially Cognitive Neuroscience and Animal Behavior and interdisciplinary work is encouraged. Our program also benefits enormously from the wider Neuroscience community on the University of Washington campus. Resources include courses offered by the interdisciplinary Neurobiology and Behavior graduate program and several dynamic research centers (e.g. the Center for Integrative Neuroscience (CIN) , the Center for Drug Addiction Research, Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences). Opportunities exist for collaborations with 120 neuroscience faculty across campus who approach their work with a broad range of techniques and levels of analysis.