This one-year neuroscience journal club prepares students for advanced coursework at the medical school in neural systems.
For purposes of this training program, fluency in systems neuroscience and neurophysiology is required; thus, all students are required to take the 6-credit core graduate course in Systems Neuroscience (Biol 5651: Neural Systems). However, some potential trainees with classic electrical engineering or computer science undergraduate degrees may not have the proper biology foundation to be successful in a graduate level neurophysiology course where most of the students have studied neuroscience at the undergraduate level.
In order to ensure all potential trainees have the necessary neuroscience background, a one-year neuroscience journal club will be offered beginning second semester of their first year. This journal club does not have any course credit associated with it – and attendance is voluntary. The course will be taught by the clinical and pre-clinical TNNT mentors at the medical school.
- Once a week (e.g. Monday), a seminal paper in neuroscience is assigned by one of the program faculty and the students will be given 3 days to thoroughly read the paper.
- On Thursday that week, a senior trainee (4th year student in the program) will first give a half hour lecture/primer on the background neuroscience and statistics in the paper.
- Next the faculty mentor who chose the paper leads a one-hour discussion on the findings of the paper, its statistical rigor, its relation to neuroscience and its potential clinical applications.
- Attendance is taken in order to determine how engaged each student is in the program.
Check back for a schedule and list of publications.