The Department of Neuroscience is devoted to education and research in this remarkably interdisciplinary and dynamic field of modern science. Research emphasizes cellular, developmental, molecular and systems neurobiology, neuroethology, and neurogenetics, targeting contemporary areas such as intra- and intercellular signaling, synaptic mechanisms, development of the central nervous system, information processing in sensory systems, insects as neurobiological and neuroethological models and vectors of disease, neurogenetics of developmental neurological disorders, evolution of neural systems, and biorobotics.

Faculty Research

• Wulfila Gronenberg explores brain regions underlying learning and memory.
• Charles Higgins studies brain design to make intelligent mobile robots.
• John Hildebrand investigates olfaction-based behaviors and underlying brain mechanisms.
• Richard Levine studies regions of the nervous system that control movement.
• Alan Nighorn studies the development, functional mechanisms, and plasticity of olfaction.
• Lynne Oland studies roles of glial cells in brain development and how glial cells influence the firing patterns of neurons when brain circuits are active.
• Nicholas Strausfeld is challenging conventional thinking about brain evolution.
• Leslie Tolbert is Senior Vice President for Research.
• Konrad Zinsmaier investigates synapses, structures that process and modulate information among nerve cells.