Bachelor of Arts in Neuroscience

Nervous systems are responsible for our motivations, sensations, memories, and actions, generating the breathtaking variety of behaviors we observe across human and nonhuman animals. But how does a network of interconnected nerve cellsfrom perhaps a few hundred in small invertebrates to roughly 100 billion in humansperform this remarkable function How do healthy human brains generate our conscious experiences, our emotions, our unmatched behavioral complexity, and our near-limitless capacity for forming new memories How do disorders of and injuries to our nervous systems generate the debilitating symptoms'such as memory loss and paralysisthat affect people with conditions like Alzheimer's disease or spinal cord damage And what opportunities'such as novel drug treatments or brain-controlled prostheticsmight we someday use to treat these pathologies

The undergraduate major in Neuroscience is motivated by an enthusiasm for exploring these and other questions in the field, alongside an urgency to foster general scientific literacy amidst a constant stream of news stories heralding life-changing discoveries. Growing academic interest and popular fascination with the brain signal a dynamic time for the field of neuroscience and inform our two broad goals: to prepare students for careers in neuroscience or other natural sciences in both academia and private industry, and to nurture skills and competencies that apply to these and other postgraduate trajectories, including education, law, public policy, communication, sales and marketing, engineering, public health, and clinical and behavioral therapy.

Learning Outcomes
Students who complete the Major in Neuroscience will:

Master the fundamentals of neuroscience spanning the breadth of the field, from the theoretical to the experimental, and across multiple levels of analysis. For example, how does the functional neuroanatomy of sensory processing support language ability, and/or what cellular features and molecular mechanisms lead to neurodegenerative disorders
Write effectively for a scientific audience, which entails synthesizing and citing the scientific literature, writing clearly, concisely, logically, and objectively, and adhering to the conventions of the most common formats in the field (such as grant proposals and research articles).
Demonstrate competency in the scientific method, evidence-based reasoning, and experimental design, for example, by crafting testable hypotheses, identifying manipulated and measured variables, understanding experimental controls, and differentiating correlational from experimental research.

You will need to send original or certified copies of your home country's credentials as part of your application. TOEFL ibt - Students who are most competitive for admission will have a composite score of at least 90-100 and minimum scores of 20 in each section. IELTS - A total/overall score of 7 or higher will also satisfy BU's English Language proficiency requirement for all programs.