Biopsychology is an interdisciplinary branch of psychology that analyzes how the brain, neurotransmitters, and other aspects of our biology influence our behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. This field of psychology is also sometimes known as physiological psychology, behavioral neuroscience, or psychobiology.
This is a biopsychology class, therefore please pick a related topic.
For the final project, you are required to write a 10-page research paper on any topic in Biopsychology. While you choose to complete the paper option, you are required to abide by 7th Edition APA Formatting (information and formatting guidelines can be found here: owl.purdue.edu). This project will allow you to do a bit more of a deep dive into a topic that piques your interest. Besides the information listed above, there are no other guidelines here. I want to give you room to be creative with this so you can have some fun with all of the information that’s out there. If you need a bit more guidance on this, feel free to reach out to me, but for now, here are some approaches to get you thinking…
1) Analyze one specific peer-reviewed publication that you have enjoyed reading. In this case, you would present on or write about each section (Introduction/Prior Findings, Methods, Results, Discussion), with a special emphasis on the limitations of the study, that is, what is this study lacking? What could the researchers have done better? What should be tested in the future? If you choose this option, the limitations discussion will be especially important; this will allow me to assess your application of scientific research methods. Critiquing experiments is a crucial skill to have if your goal is to continue down the path of conducting research.
2) Conduct a research synthesis. Here, you would pick one topic you find interesting and focus on its corresponding prior methods and findings. In using this approach, it is important to pay attention to the flow and organization of your presentation or paper. When analyzing the breadth of one single topic, your ability to organize and portray this information efficiently is a vital skill when it comes to doing this stuff in the real world.
3) Establish a connection between two seemingly unrelated topics. In neuroscience, this is much easier than it sounds. The more research we do in the field, the more we realize everything is connected. You will likely learn a lot by taking this approach. If your goal is to become an experimentalist, this approach is an amazing way to maneuver the ins and outs of developing a study, i.e., could variables associated with topic Y inflict extraneous influence on my hypotheses about topic X? How could my findings on topic X play into findings of topic Y? Are there any prior publications specifically linking topics X and Y together? Have fun here; there is no such thing as an unacceptable connection between topics.
