NEUSC 6050 - Principles of Systems Neuroscience

Perhaps the most essential function of the brain is to generate behaviors that maximize an animal’s well-being in a dynamically changing environment. Doing so requires often-enormous numbers of neurons to work together in a highly coordinated way. In this course, we will learn about the principles that govern such activity within neural circuits and how they shape an animal’s ability to sense, learn, plan and ultimately adapt to its environment. Our approach will use a combination of didactic lectures and group discussion that emphasizes the primary systems neuroscience literature, and the myriad quantitative and experimental techniques that are used to understand the brain.