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Ph.D. in Brain, Body and Behavior

The Brain, Body and Behavior doctoral program is for students who wish to pursue research at the interface of current biomedical domains and the traditional domains of our Cognitive Neuroscience or Social-Developmental programs. Students in this program will be united by their common biomedical training and will have common training with students in either the Cognitive Neuroscience or Social-Developmental program. This common biomedical training will enhance research interactions between traditionally disparate sub-disciplines within psychology as well as interactions with between psychological and biomedical domains, both during residence in the graduate program and in the students' later careers. The program aims to provide psychology Ph.D. students the perspectives and skills necessary to join interdisciplinary research teams addressing behavioral and mental health issues.

The research and curricular requirements for students in the Brain, Body and Behavior program will differ in two ways from those for students in the Cognitive Neuroscience or Social-Developmental programs: 1) students will be required to have either dual research mentors in a psychological and a biomedical laboratory or a single mentor whose work inherently integrates the two disciplines, and 2) students must satisfy a Biomedical Breadth Requirement. This can be done by taking courses from an approved list of offerings, and participating in selected biomedical seminars and colloquia within and outside the Department of Psychology. A common course that will be required for students in all programs is the Proseminar in Brain, Body, And Behavior, which introduces research topics and methodologies cutting across traditional psychological and biomedical domains. Within these constraints, students are free to decide with their advisor the precise curriculum that best suits his or her needs on the basis of previous history of training and current interests.

Please visit the faculty page to see the research interests of individual faculty members and the research areas represented in the department.

Admissions

Admission to the Brain, Body and Behavior program will require a stronger background in basic science than the other two programs, so that students will be prepared to engage in graduate level rather than remedial research, course work and seminars in biomedical, integrative areas.