Spring 2027
Permission forms will be accepted for Spring 2027 courses beginning on April 17, 2026. Note that all the PSYC courses listed below are accepted towards the Psychology major, but only some are accepted towards the Neuroscience major.
In 27S at 2A, TBD
This course is designed to introduce students to the theoretical and practical issues involved in conducting functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments of cognitive and behaviorally-related brain activity. Participants will gain an understanding of the physiological principles underlying the fMRI signal change, as well as the considerations for experimental design. The course will include firsthand exposure to the scanning environment and data collection procedures. Participants will be provided conceptual and hands-on experience with image processing and statistical analysis. At the completion of this course, it is expected that participants will be prepared to critique, design and conduct fMRI studies; appreciate limitations and potentials of current fMRI methods and techniques; and better understand the broad range of expertise required in an fMRI research program. The course is designed to provide the participant with intensive, hands-on instruction. As a result, enrollment in the course will be limited to 12 people. Knowledge of MR physics, signal processing, or the UNIX/Linux operating system is not a prerequisite.
Approved course for the Neuroscience major/minor.
Prerequisite: Instructor permission through the department website.
In 27S at 10A, Kyle Smith
Much of the life of humans and other animals revolves around reward, whether engaging in basic pleasures like food and sex or enjoying more complex things like music. This course will introduce conceptual frameworks to understand reward as a phenomenon that is distinct from other features of goal-directed behavior. We will then discuss recent advances in neuroscience research that are helping us to understand the basic brain mechanisms that make things pleasurable, including anatomical pathways, neurotransmitter systems, and dynamics of neural activity.
Approved course for the Neuroscience major/minor.
Prerequisite: PSYC 6 and PSYC 37; and instructor permission via the department website
In 27S at 3A, Richard Granger
For the first 200 million years of mammalian evolution, most animals' brain sizes were highly predictable from their body size. In the past four million years, an evolutionary blink of the eye, primates rapidly evolved brains that are several times larger than previously would have been predicted for their body size. How did this occur? What are the effects of these substantial brain changes? What are the contents of human brains, and how do they differ from the brains of other primates (and other mammals, and non-mammals)? Evolution acts on genes, not on organisms; what are the genetic factors that have been identified in recent primate brain growth? What relationships may obtain between anatomical and functional brain characteristics? What mechanisms are at play, including extrinsic factors and evolutionary "pressures"? What differential predictions do various theories make, and how are they tested? How would we know if a hypothesis is false; how do we know if they are falsifiable? The class will critically examine a set of related topics including brain structure, anthropology, evolution, genetics, development, cognition, race, intelligence.
Approved course for the neuroscience major/minor.
Prerequisite: PSYC 1 or PSYC 6; and instructor permission via the department website
In 27S at 2, Jeremy Manning
Humanity creates nearly 350 TB of data each day, and much of it is freely available for us to download. But making sense of that staggering amount of text, video, audio, and other forms of data is like drinking from a firehose: the sheer quantity of data makes it tricky to make sense of what it means. In this course we will study how to find, clean, analyze, make sense of, and communicate about complex data.
In addition to helping you to build up your data science toolbox, the course is centered around telling engaging, compelling, (often) entertaining, and, above all, clear "stories" about data. This will require considering your audience's mindset, goals, motivations, and backgrounds, and then leveraging those considerations to develop effective ways of conveying the major plot points.
Prerequisite: Instructor permission via the department website.
In 27S at 2A, Gus Cooney
This course examines the psychology of conversation—how it works; what makes it succeed or fail; and what it takes to build a rigorous science of one of the most familiar yet poorly understood things that humans do. Drawing on interdisciplinary research, we cover topics including turn-taking, listening, prosody, common ground, politeness, gossip, humor, decision-making errors, and group dynamics, as well as how conversation varies across age, gender, personality, culture, and clinical populations. Students analyze real recorded conversations, conduct original observational research, engage with qualitative and computational methods, and participate in conversation simulations designed to sharpen both their scientific understanding and their skills as conversationalists.
Prerequisites: PSYC 1; PSYC 10 (or equivalent); and instructor permission via the department website
- See Independent Research for more info on PSYC 70 (Neuroscience Research), PSYC 88 (Independent Psychology Research), and PSYC 90 (Independent Neuroscience Research).
- See Psychology Honors for more info on PSYC 89 (Honors Psychology Research)
- See Neuroscience Honors for more info on PSYC 91 (Honors Neuroscience Research)
- See Psychology Thesis for more info on PSYC 92 (Psychology Thesis Research)
- See Neuroscience Thesis for more info on PSYC 93 (Neuroscience Thesis Research)