Foundations of Behavioral Neuroscience

About our authors Neil R. Carlson pursued his undergraduate studies at the University of Illinois. He had planned to study nuclear physics, but when he discovered in an introductory psychology course that psychology was really a science, he decided that was what he wanted to do. Before changing his major, Carlson talked with several professors and visited their laboratories, and when he saw what physiological psychologists do, he knew that he had found his niche. He stayed on at Illinois and received his Ph.D. Then, after a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Iowa, Carlson came to the University of Massachusetts, where he taught throughout his entire career. He retired from UMass in the fall of 2004 but continues to keep up with developments in the field of behavioral neuroscience and to revise his book.

As an undergraduate psychology major at Cornell University, Melissa A. Birkett discovered courses in biopsychology, behavior, endocrinology and evolutionary psychology. There, she was introduced to interdisciplinary research incorporating multiple perspectives in the challenging task of understanding behavior. She became interested in learning about behavior and its underlying mechanisms. She worked as an undergraduate research assistant in several laboratories on projects ranging from insect behavior to sleep in undergraduates. Those formative experiences and interactions with several influential research mentors convinced her to pursue a career in research.

Melissa completed her PhD in the Neuroscience and Behavior program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (where Neil Carlson was a faculty member at the time). In 2007, she accepted a faculty position at Northern Arizona University in the Department of Psychological Sciences, and in the fall of 2018 became an Assistant Professor at Southern Oregon University. Melissa currently conducts research related to the stress response and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in neuroscience, psychopharmacology and the teaching of psychology. Each semester, she supervises student researchers and seeks to provide them with the kinds of opportunities she found valuable as a student. Her work has been recognized with awards for both outstanding teaching and teaching innovation, and she has contributed to several publications on best practices in teaching neuroscience.