Systems and Behavioral Neuroscience

The Neuroscience of ADHD

In both public and medical understanding, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is often thought of as a simple attention deficit. However, continuing research has found that it is a far more complex disorder.

Issue 23

Kinesiology of Balance: Understanding Implications of Targeted Dance Therapy on Proprioception

For some, balancing on one leg is easy. However, take away a person’s sight and this task becomes more challenging. Strip away a person’s sense of hearing as well, and the task that used to be “easy” is now quite difficult. How do dancers make the act of balancing seem so effortless?

Issue 22

COVID on the Brain

A sore throat. A cough. Difficulty breathing. In the post-2020 era, these symptoms are readily identifiable and directly related to an infection from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which has taken the world by storm.

Issue 21

Missing a Mind’s Eye: The Metacognition of Aphantasia

What is your favorite memory? Is it sitting in front of the fireplace, burrowing yourself under a blanket with a visibly steaming cup of hot cocoa between your hands?

Issue 21

Something to Crow About

In mythology, corvids, the family of birds that includes crows and ravens, are often depicted as clever and mischievous. Native Americans tell stories of ravens as wise and practical jokesters who created the world.

Issue 21

The Placebo Effect in Depression Treatment

Medications have long been one of mankind's best ways of treating diseases. Imagine you are feeling nauseous, so you go to a doctor and they prescribe you some medication. You take it, and within hours you start feeling better.

Issue 20

Screaming into the Void: Evolved and Learned Echolocation

Hunters of the night, unseen during the day, bats are some of the most interesting creatures on the planet. Making up roughly a quarter of all mammal species, they are remarkably similar to humans.

Issue 20

A Trip to Your Happy Place

Naturally occurring hallucinogens have been around for centuries and are used for a myriad of reasons from recreational to spiritual. The first synthetically-made hallucinogen was created in 1938 by a

Issue 19

To See or Not to See

The year was 1998 and a blind woman had done the seemingly impossible: she had managed to accurately post a letter in a constantly rotating mail slot. By all accounts,

Issue 19

Brain Cartography: How Mammals Memorize Spatial Maps

Let’s say someone asked you to memorize a random list of twenty animals. Your first thought, aside from “Why?”, would probably be, “How can I manage to memorize all of these creatures?”

Issue 19

Jogging Your Memory: Exercise and Alzheimer's Disease

It can be difficult to fit exercise into busy schedules, especially for college students who always seem to have exams and deadlines approaching. However, exercise provides many neurological benefits, such

Mind Your Language

One of the most fundamental things separating humans from all other species on Earth is our ability to use language. While other living things may be able to communicate brief

Code of Conduct: Bayesian Predictive Coding

To correctly interpret sensory data, the brain is faced with solving an inverse problem: one where the causes need to be inferred from the perceived outcomes [1]. There are many

Mind and Matter

It is impossible to ignore the association that exists in the modern era between meditation and the calming of one’s mind and emotions–the image of a lackadaisical hippie

Issue 15

Models of Memory

Imagine waking up one day without any memory. You can probably picture yourself in a state of extreme confusion, not knowing who you are, where you are, or how you

Issue 15

How the Brain Learns Addiction

A quick Google search for “addiction” gives over 800 million results in less than a second. This vast cyberspace includes hotline numbers, treatment facilities, and heartbreaking statistics. According to the

Issue 15

The Spoken Bird

With about 10,000 species, birds make up one of the most diverse classes in the animal kingdom.

Issue 14

Neural Oscillations

With the new millennium, interconnectivity has undoubtedly become an integral part of society; and with it, the need to learn new information with ease and grace. Traditionally, this has meant

Issue 14

Insomnia: Why Students Are Sleeping in Class

It’s no secret that college students struggle to get sleep. Between juggling midterms, homework, and 8:30 a.m. classes, it isn’t just a stereotype that students are

Cover Article

In Your Dreams: Insights from Dream Research

Why Do We Dream? Dreams have held cultural and religious significance throughout history, and in some cases, they have influenced history or culture themselves. James Watson, who won the Nobel

Issue 13

Reflecting on Mirror Neurons

On the lush savannah stand a herd of gazelles, grazing. Behind them, men prowl, registering one another’s actions in order to work together and formulate a plan to split their spoils.

Issue 13

The Floating Brain: Neuroscience of Microgravity

Anyone who has ever flown across the world is aware of the exhausting journey that a 12-hour flight can hold, from headaches due to the engine’s grueling background noise

Issue 13

Dive Into the Mind of an Octopus

Humans are intelligent beings capable of complex cognitive feats such as self-awareness. There are many existing and emerging theories proposing different explanations for this exceptional intelligence. A common strategy for

Issue 13

Feeding Behavior

Within the human body, many conditions need to be kept within a physiologically optimal range for the system to function properly. This is highly important at the cellular and subcellular

Issue 12

A Brain Divided

A frequently misquoted myth about the brain is that scientists and researchers are “left-brained” and artists and writers are “right-brained.” But what would happen if each side actually had to

The Undergraduate Neuroscience Journal