What are the perceptual features of the phenomenon? What is known about the pathways that it relies on in the brain? Do we understand either the molecular basis of your topic, or how it relates to neural activity?

The Neuroscience of Vocal Communication

Paper writeups will be due the final day of presentations, by the beginning of the day (5PM) on Fri Apr 29. Either email or hard copy is fine. Think of this as a general review paper of your personal specific topic, that describes the major ideas in the field and the state of the art of recent experiments.

General info: a good target range is ~10-11 pages at 1.5 spacing. No strict length requirements – conciseness is a plus, but grading does depend on covering your topic in reasonable depth. A good goal would be to base your report on ~5-8 literature sources, including 1-2 general reviews, and 3-4 primary papers. Other sources are fine as long as they’re reliable, but the majority of your work should be based on literature sources.

Some ideas for organizing your paper: Reviews will often provide some historical perspective, leading up to – what are the prevailing ideas in the field in the present day? Which general principles are well agreed on? What experiments have been most influential in guiding thinking? Is there any controversy and/or disagreement over major points?

For a sensory topic, other questions might be – What are the perceptual features of the phenomenon? What is known about the pathways that it relies on in the brain? Do we understand either the molecular basis of your topic, or how it relates to neural activity? What are the outstanding questions in the field that still need to be addressed in the future?