The Psychology Department brings together outstanding faculty, staff, graduate, and undergraduate students to carry out our scientific and educational missions. At its core, Psychology seeks to understand the complexities of human behavior in a multitude of ways - how the brain gives rise to behavior, how behavior is affected by mental illness, injury, and disease, and finally, how to develop effective interventions to promote mental wellbeing. Our science examines everything from the single neuron to broad cultural and societal contributions to behaviorand the full range in between. As a 21st-century science, psychology is constantly exploring and incorporating emerging new approaches to our work, often by breaking down traditional academic and scientific boundaries.
Students graduate work will largely consist of courses, seminars, reading, and research in their graduate area, and all graduate students should discuss their proposed coursework with their area head prior to registration. There are, however, some departmental requirements that everyone must satisfy. These requirements are primarily designed to insure that students acquire a reasonable breadth of experience within psychology.
The Cognition, Brain, and Behavior program is designed to provide students with rigorous training in the concepts and methods of cognitive neuroscience. We seek to understand the underlying neural basis of human behavior by taking a broad perspective, examining both normal and abnormal populations across the lifespan from early childhood through old age. Faculty research interests cut across nearly all areas of cognitive neuroscience, including perception, learning and memory, language, executive function, decision making, categorization, emotion, and social function.