Faculty members who do brain research include those from the departments of cognitive and linguistic sciences, computer science, neuroscience, physics, psychology, psychiatry and clinical neuroscience, and the divisions of applied mathematics, biology and medicine, and engineering. The new program will focus public attention on research that has been carried out quietly. The program is also expected to attract undergraduates, and a graduate program is pending. A t Brown, neuroscientists are trying to map the vast populations of hundreds of thousands of neurons, to find out how they enable us to think, hear, see, learn, feel pain and use language. To do this, scientists measure brain activity in animal models or watch for the release of minute amounts of brain chemicals.
Psychologists test humans, measuring what they see or how they remember.
Psychiatrists and neurosurgeons are conducting clinical trials that will determine whether improvements can be made in treating memory loss, Parkinson's disease and obsessive compulsive disorder. An example of interdisciplinary collaboration is the research focusing on how the brain learns complex movement skills such as playing tennis or the piano. Using animal models, Nicholas Hatsopoulos and other neuroscientists record the brain's electrical activity. To understand not just what it's made of but what it does, you really need to understand mathematics, be very well versed in computer science, in psychology. Also, some of us are studying the behavior of animals, and studying people.