Ask Drugmonkey: Call to the Hivemind on Behavioral Neuroscience coursework
September 23, 2015
A longtime Reader asks:
My colleagues and I are trying to finalize our revisions/updates to the courses we will require as part of a PhD in behavioral neuroscience. It would be helpful to get input on what others’ experience is: how many credit hours of classwork are required, and what are seen as the essential items? [We’re at 47 class credits currently, trying to reduce to either 41 or 38 but facing resistance to eliminating non-neuro psychology classes from requirements.]
Anyone have any thoughts on this?
I myself think that “eliminating non-neuro psychology classes” is a huge mistake and I join their local resistance. The field of so-called behavioral neuroscience already has far too many people who are insufficiently grounded in good old Behavioral Psychology.
If you take the current replication hoopla seriously, it is a bad idea to cut behavior out of the curriculum.
DrugMonkey 
September 23, 2015 at 2:26 pm
Agreed. There is so much information and methodology out there, overlooked or forgotten, in basic behavioral psychology.
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September 23, 2015 at 2:31 pm
Evil! You still exist! Where ya been dude?
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September 23, 2015 at 3:01 pm
47 class credits, are you freaking kidding me? (assuming typical class is 3 credits – that’s >15 classes). When do they get in the lab? for the record, my PhD program had zero course requirements…
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September 23, 2015 at 3:03 pm
FWIW, my cognitive neuroscience PhD program required 60 credit-hours of coursework. That was in the US… I’m given to understand doctoral programs in other countries tend to run lighter on classroom instruction.
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September 23, 2015 at 3:04 pm
Oh, and I finished in four years with three first-author primary research articles (human EEG studies), more than 12 papers total. Typical was 5-7 years.
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September 23, 2015 at 3:36 pm
What the fucke even is Behavioral Psychology?
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September 23, 2015 at 4:00 pm
Corollary question: should a PhD in behavioral neuroscience even exist?
I think the nature of “neuroscience” is that it encompasses many realms of inquiry, and most interesting neuroscience research does not seek to confine itself to just behavior.
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September 23, 2015 at 4:11 pm
Behaviorism, PP.
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September 23, 2015 at 4:18 pm
DJMH- should a PhD in neuroscience exist or is it so meaninglessly broad it might as well be called “biology”? By what virtue should we be interested even the slightest in an alleged neuroscience that does not tie directly to behavior?
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September 23, 2015 at 4:27 pm
Someone aught to tell the editors that their journal is doing Behavioral Neuroscience wrong: http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=browsePA.volumes&jcode=bne
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September 23, 2015 at 4:40 pm
Yeah, definite mistake to skimp on the study of what can be inferred from behavior, alone.
As difficult as slice physiology, imaging, and in vivo recording can be, I’ve found training reliable behaviors, and adequate task designs, that directly address the question to be the most difficult aspect of neuroscience.
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September 23, 2015 at 4:43 pm
Which is why the lazy and small minded scientist gives the behavior short shrift.
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September 23, 2015 at 5:12 pm
Dumfuke, my lab is renowned for its careful behavioral assays and analysis. But I still don’t have any idea what the fucke behavioral psychology is.
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September 23, 2015 at 5:53 pm
If you are doing it right then you are using the principles established by psychologists. Whether you are ignorant of this or not is of little material value save for my amusement.
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September 23, 2015 at 6:29 pm
We are definitely doing our behavioral experiments correctly.
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September 23, 2015 at 7:07 pm
I’m of the opinion that 1.5-2years of coursework is adequate. If I need to learn something, I’m going to do it through reading the literature and talking to experts, not by sitting in a classroom. If those students are wanting to go the academic research route, they aren’t going to be sitting in classes to learn new techniques. Better to learn how to teach yourself early.
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September 23, 2015 at 8:59 pm
also, make sure they all know basic molecular biology.
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September 23, 2015 at 9:21 pm
We are definitely doing our behavioral experiments correctly.
sure thing PP
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September 23, 2015 at 9:23 pm
also, make sure they all know basic molecular biology.
meh. every time I have a postdoc slot open I get a million CVs all testifying to their molecular bio chops. if it is this easy to come by, why waste too much time on that?
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September 23, 2015 at 9:28 pm
As if you woyld know, fuckeface.
Regardless, molecular biology is so fucken trivial compared to animal behavior, it’s not even funny.
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September 23, 2015 at 10:14 pm
Sure, you can teach, for example, Cre/loxP and CRISPR/Cas9 in an afternoon. So it shouldn’t be that hard to add to a PhD requirement.
this has nothing to do with animal behavior being complex, so why even make a direct comparison?
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September 23, 2015 at 11:50 pm
Sorry to thread-jack DM, but is anyone else disturbed by frickin’ American Psychological Association ads on NPR? What the hell is their game? Is this a PR job in response to the replication crisis? Ted, do you plan on addressing this assault on my breakfast radio nirvana?
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September 24, 2015 at 12:24 am
You should see the crankery on my NPR station, blatant attempt at authenticity by association if you ask me.
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September 24, 2015 at 12:27 am
Your typo makes me question the quality of your lab’s behavioral studies, PP.
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September 24, 2015 at 9:11 am
I cannot wrap my head around requiring PhD students to take 12-15 classes. Were they all Art majors in college?
I highly doubt that Behavioral Psych is on the chopping block for Behavioral Neuro students, but would you object to un-requiring Personality Theory? Social Constructs? To me these are truly non-neuro* but are fundamental to many Psych cores and I’d rather my students be in the lab than in classes like this.
*Not that these topics can’t be studied from a neuro approach or have no neurological basis, but that is not what one learns in courses on these topics.
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September 24, 2015 at 9:25 am
Sam N: “As difficult as slice physiology, imaging, and in vivo recording can be, I’ve found training reliable behaviors, and adequate task designs, that directly address the question to be the most difficult aspect of neuroscience.”
DM: “Which is why the lazy and small minded scientist gives the behavior short shrift.”
Amazing how many lazy and small minded scientists get their lazy and small minded science published in lazy and small minded journals like CNS.
It’s enough to drive those with a real interest in behavior bonkers. Maybe even drive them out of science entirely.
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September 24, 2015 at 10:07 am
Ours is just a Neuro program, not specifically behavioral, and we have 37 credits of coursework including electives, required seminars, and grant writing (but not lab rotations). As a student I feel like this is a lot – I would much rather be putting that time and energy into lab. Of course, the program admins would probably argue it’s for my own good.
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September 24, 2015 at 10:14 am
“Your typo makes me question the quality of your lab’s behavioral studies, PP.”
Woyld’s not a typo, fukeface. It’s Ye Olde Englishe!
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September 24, 2015 at 10:16 am
our phd program (physical science) requires 13 courses for the phd degree. there are four “core” classes, every student has to take at least two of those four. in some fields (theory/computation), i can see the courses being helpful — techniques picked up in some of the classes can be directly applied to their research. however, for the students interested in a career as experimentalists, there is little benefit to additional coursework beyond ~7-8 classes. many find themselves scrounging to find classes that will help them meet the criteria.
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September 24, 2015 at 2:57 pm
“I’m of the opinion that 1.5-2years of coursework is adequate.”
In the U.S., two semesters of programmatic coursework is all there shoyld (that was a genuine typo but let’s just leave it as “Ye Olde Englishe”) be. The remaining course credits should be allowed in the form of participation in CSHL courses or the like that provide theoretical as well as actual hands-on training in the methodologies that one is interested in and are most applicable to their research projects.
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September 25, 2015 at 2:47 pm
I’m currently taking a course on evidence-based approaches to teaching and learning in STEM education, which I am finding immensely enjoyable and interesting. It strikes me that there is very little evidence about how much coursework is actually beneficial for the long-term success of PhD students, despite that this is nominally an empirical question. Accordingly, I’m hesitant to stake out a position that 1-2 years is sufficient without evidence. Perhaps I can take this on as a research project for the course…
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