The Psychological and Brain Sciences Department applies scientific approaches to understanding sensation, motivation, perception, cognition, language, development, personality, psychological disorders, and social behavior. As a collective, we deploy techniques that capture processes at the level of the gene, the cell, the brain, the individual organism, and the group.
Students in IJʿ’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences explore provocative and important questions at multiple levels-of-analysis; from brain to behavior and everything in between. The following are some examples of the questions they ask:
- How plastic is the nervous system; how does it develop and what experiences change it?
- Does gesture train the brain for language learning and intercultural understanding?
- How can we conquer biases and prejudices we don’t know we have?
- How can we miss seeing what is right in front of us?
- Are relationships literally good for the heart?
- Is the clock of development preordained by genes?
- Why are some people resilient to misfortune and others vulnerable to life’s stresses and bad habits?
- What pleasures our brains as we behold great art?
Join the effort to deploy a broad array of empirical methodologies and tools to answer these questions. The department emphasizes undergraduate research, offering world-class faculty and facilities, the challenge to conduct and write a senior thesis, and the ability to explore personal interests through credit-bearing, self-designed independent study.
