This is a blog that I started in 2010 for a 300-level seminar course on Psychology & Neuroscience  that I teach in the Psychology Department at Colby College. In this course we explore the interplay between the broad fields of psychology and neuroscience through a focus on specific, timely topics. The regular contributors to the blog are the fabulous, thoughtful, and terrifically engaged undergraduate students that enroll in this course each year.

We have covered a wide range of topics and that diversity is more than evident from the wide variety of subjects written about on this site.

Spring 2010- Mood Disorders and Stress (no particular text was used)
Fall 2010- Monkeyluv by Robert Sapolsky
Fall 2011- Synaptic Self by Joseph LeDoux
Spring 2013- Connectome by Sebastian Sueng and Neuroethics by Martha Farah
Spring 2014- Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan, The Eden Express by Mark Vonnnegut, and America Anonymous by Benoit Denizet-Lewis.
Spring 2015- Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep by Timothy Verstynen and Bradley Voytek and Wednesday is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia by Richard Cytowic and David Eagleman
Spring 2016- The Encultured Brain by Daniel Lende and Greg Downey and The Aesthetic Brain by Anjan Chatterjee
Spring 2017- The Dreams of Santiago Ramon y Cajal by Benjamin Ehrlich and The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
Spring 2018- I was on sabbatical! Woohoo! But the best book I read on sabbatical was The Ecology and Sociology of the Norway Rat by John Calhoun. I also discovered The Animal Mind by Margaret Floy Washburn.
Spring 2019- Behave: The Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky.
Spring 2020- The scientific legacy of Dr. Bruce McEwen.

Spring 2022- Projections by Dr. Karl Deisseroth and Ketamine by Dr. Bita Moghaddam.

Spring 2023– This semester we are exploring addiction through reading Drug Use for Grown-Ups by Dr. Carl Hart and Cannabinoids and the Brain by Dr. Linda A. Parker