Neuroscience

Neuroscience is the study of the nervous system as a whole. Someone who does neuroscience takes numerous different disciplines–psychology, computer science, mathematics, physics, philosophy and medicine to name a few–and bring them together with the understand of how the brain works. Traditionally, neuroscience was a branch of biology; however, because of a revolutionary change in how things are done, it's now evolved into a much larger network of understanding the brain's processes.

Modern Day Neuroscience

While in the past, neuroscience was all about understanding what neurons were, how to brain functioned and the overall reactions that took place to allow things to work the way they do. However, in the second half of the 20th century, a new type of neuroscience began to appear that, as described above, took disciplines of all different sorts and began to tie them together to gain a better understanding of how things really worked.

Because of fields such as molecular biology, electrophysiology and computational neuroscience, scientists have since been able to figure out the inner workings of a single neuron. With just plain traditional neuroscience, this would not have been possible because a neuron is more than just biology. It is electricity and the passing of currents. And, since the brain is like one big computer, the computational aspect was necessary. The next step is to understand the entire neural network.

The Future of Neuroscience

Because of the growing influence that is obviously there in neuroscience, many are beginning to take their research in a direction that will understand more cognitive types of biology. The big questions neuroscientists are asking relate to learning and other behaviors we do. What happens during sleep? What is the brain work involved in decision making? These are just two of the many questions that scientists are looking at when it comes to Neuroscience.

Becoming a Neuroscientist

Because there is so much more to neuroscience than just the biology, going into many different fields can still lead you to the overall goal of getting involved in neuroscience projects. To begin with, since there is such an interest in learning and other behaviors, psychology is a growing field in neuroscience. And, since it has been determined that the brain is just one big super computer, an understanding of computer science can help you get work in neuroscience. All in all, there are many different disciplines that, with the correct amount of education, can land you work in the neuroscience field that is ever growing.