卡尔顿大学

Neuroscience is a new, exciting, and rapidly expanding scientific discipline that aims to understand how physical processes in our brains underlie complex functions such as movement, sensation, memory, emotion, consciousness and thought. Faculty and students in Neuroscience are particularly interested in how diseases that affect the brain lead to mental health problems, with the focus of our research including depression, Parkinson’s disease, obesity, Alzheimer’s disease and concussion. Our research, like our academic programs, integrates information from many disciplines including medicine, molecular biology, psychology, immunology, genetics, chemistry and epidemiology.

The Neuroscience Department’s state-of-the-art purpose-built research and teaching labs are to be housed in Carleton’s new Health Sciences building, opening in 2017.

Neuroscience is available as a Combined Honours program between the Departments of Neuroscience and Biology.

The Neuroscience (Combined Honours) program is offered jointly between the Departments of Biology and Neuroscience. While less flexible than the Neuroscience and Mental Health program, the Combined Honours program is aimed at students interested in a greater emphasis on core Biology courses and lab-based courses.

Core courses

Your first year of neuroscience studies is composed of basic science courses, including biology, chemistry and physics. You will also take introductory courses in both neuroscience and psychology.

As you progress in the program, you will take more specialized courses, including required courses that focus on core concepts in neuroscience and psychopharmacology. You will also be able to select from a wide range of optional neuroscience courses, including courses on consciousness, sex and the brain, addictions, immune-brain interactions, stress and mental health, environmental toxins and mental health, neurodegeneration and aging, or neurodevelopment determinants of mental health.

Future opportunities

A Bachelor of Science degree in Neuroscience or Neuroscience and Mental Health provides the basic knowledge and experience for a wide range of employment opportunities.

Many of our Neuroscience students have found careers as researchers in a wide range of government, industrial and medical laboratories, as teachers, and in publishing, advertising, marketing, sales and private business consultancies.