Foundations of Brain and Behavior

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Spring 2025

Tues/Thur 9:30-10:50a

Baker Hall A51

“It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. Not even the most stupid Creator would go to the trouble of making the human head carry around several pounds of unnecessary gray goo if its only real purpose was, for example, to serve as a delicacy for certain remote tribesmen in unexplored valleys. It is used. And one of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary and turn the unusual into the usual.”

— Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

Table of Contents

Overview and Objectives

This is a course about making the miraculous seem ordinary. It offers an overview of the fundamental biological principles and mechanisms responsible for the intricate nature of human behavior. It covers a wide range of topics, including the anatomical structure of nerve cells and their communication processes, the organization and functioning of the brain, sensory system processing, cognitive neuroscience, and the impact of neural factors on social behavior, health, and emotion - we will even talk about modern AI and its relation to the human brain. Emphasis is placed on exploring the advancements in methodologies and approaches that enable psychologists, neuroscientists, computer scientists, and biologists to achieve a holistic comprehension of complex behaviors. Upon successfully completing this course, you should be able to:

  • discuss foundational issues of brain and behavior such as basic principles of neural communication, the functioning of our sensory/perceptual systems, and the neural substrates of learning, memory, and language
  • apply this core knowledge to interpreting the research you encounter in daily life, such as through the popular press, blogs, bluesky, or in other coursework - you should be able to explain things to your parents
  • understand the pro and cons of various methods for studying brain and behavior
  • critically evaluate theories and models in science more generally
  • synthesize sources of information gained from multiple methods to characterize brain/behavior relationships
  • communicate your knowledge through writing, class participation, and at the dinner table with your friends

Canvas. Class announcements, lectures, recordings, assignments, discussions, help, and grades will be available through Canvas.

All lectures/assignments/etc should be on the course calendar. If you use an electronic calendar (google, mac calendar, outlook, etc.) you can subscribe to the course calendar using this link.

Jump to the Course Summary and lecture list

If you do not see 85-219 on your Canvas Dashboard, let us know ASAP

If you really don't want to read the syllabus, here is the PDFtoBrainRot Version

Textbook. There is no required textbook, however, there will be four assigned readings (available through Canvas) with required QUESTAR responses and two self-selected readings related to your final project also with required QUESTAR responses. More on QUESTARs can be found here.

If you are looking for more formal texts to support your learning, we suggest:

Questions about the course. If you have questions about course policies, grades, content, or anything else, please email instructor and the TAs.

Instructor and TA information
ROLE WHO OFFICE

OFFICE HOURS

 EMAIL
Instructor Michael Tarr Baker Hall 335d Mon 2p-3p; Wed 1:30p-2p michaeltarr@cmu.edu
Graduate TA Ricky Choi Baker Hall 336d
(Psychology Lounge)		 Tue/Thur 11a-12p wonjoonc@andrew.cmu.edu
Undergraduate TA Eleanor Ickes Baker Hall 336d
(Psychology Lounge)		 Mon 1p-2p eickes@andrew.cmu.edu
Undergraduate TA Elise Mitchell Baker Hall 336d
(Psychology Lounge)		 Mon 11a-12p emitchel@andrew.cmu.edu
Undergraduate TA Ashley Statham Baker Hall 336d
(Psychology Lounge)		 Wed 10a-11a arstatha@andrew.cmu.edu

 

Assignments/Assessments

Note on writing stuff. Many of us struggle with writing (I still do). ChatGPT is a great way to bootstrap your writing process. You are allowed to use it in this way (just see below and make sure you acknowledge that you used it in this way in your turned in assignments). However, it isn’t a bad idea to work on becoming a better writer. I am happy to make some suggestions on materials I have found useful.

Assignment List
# Assignment % Details Due
1 Attendance and Participation 20 Completion of exit tickets At the end of every class
2 One page QUESTARs on Assigned Papers* 20 Open notes, covering the assigned article Before the start of class on the stated dates
3 One page QUESTARs on Self-Selected Articles 10 Open notes, covering the self-selected article Before the start of class on the stated dates
4 Creative Project Outline 20 Mid-semester check in on your project plan Before the start of class on Feb 27th
5 Creative Project Final Project and Paper 30 Project + 3 min presentation + associated paper Presentations the week of Apr 21st; Paper and full project before 5pm on Apr 25th
6 Extra Credit 2 More information to come
7 Research Requirement - Mandatory requirement from the Department of Psychology Before Apr 25th

*Information about the assigned papers and their PDFs are available below or by clicking on each assignment and following the links.

Jump to the Assignments List (with dates)

Assigned Papers for QUESTARs

#1

Gauthier I, Skudlarski P, Gore JC, Anderson AW. 2000. Expertise for cars and birds recruits brain areas involved in face recognition. Nat Neurosci. 3(2):191-197. doi: 10.1038/72140. Gauthier_etal_2000.pdf
#2

Goodale MA, Milner AD. 1992. Separate visual pathways for perception and action. Trends Neurosci. 15(1):20-25. doi: 10.1016/0166-2236(92)90344-8. Goodale_Milner_1992.pdf
#3

Simons, DJ (1996). In Sight, Out of Mind: When Object Representations Fail. Psychological Science, 7(5), 301-305. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1996.tb00378.x. Simons_1996.pdf
#4 Nicholas B. Turk-Browne, Do-Joon Yi, Marvin M. Chun (2006). Linking Implicit and Explicit Memory: Common Encoding Factors and Shared Representations, Neuron, 49(6), 917-927. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2006.01.030 . Turk-Browne_et_al_2006.pdf

Attendance and Participation (20%). You are expected to attend all classes and participate in discussions, ask questions etc. I really dislike lecturing to a class for 60+ minutes straight and I doubt you enjoy it very much either. Ask questions. Even ones that are (somewhat) off topic. If you don't understand something, speak up. If you do understand something, but are curious about some aspect of things, speak up.  We do understand that unforeseen circumstances may occur, such as other commitments, illness, or simply needing a break.

Our attendance policy offers flexibility: You can miss up to 3 lectures without affecting your attendance grade—you’ll still receive 100%. If you miss between 4 and 6 lectures, your attendance grade will be 50%. If you miss 7 or more lectures, you won’t receive any attendance grade. There’s no need to inform us if you’re using your allowed absences, but please plan accordingly to make the most of this flexibility.

You are also expected to participate in class by listening to the lecture and your classmates’ questions, asking your own questions, and generally engaging in the learning experience. We will assess your attendance and participation grade through “exit tickets.” At the end of each class, you will be expected to submit an exit ticket with approximately the following content. The specific prompts for each exit ticket will appear on the last slide of each lecture and the prompts may vary a bit from lecture to lecture:

  • Your name in LASTNAME, FIRSTNAME form (neatly written!)
  • A short question or comment related to the lecture: something you found interesting, something that wasn’t clearly explained, or an unanswered question about the material you would like to have answered
  • Any feedback you have on the lecture

We will use these to encourage your active engagement with the material and to address any confusions at the start of the next lecture.

One Page Papers on Assigned Articles (20%). Over the course of the semester there will be four assigned articles to read (PDFs will be available through Canvas). Estimated time per assignment: 4-6 hours. For each assignment, you will write a one-page paper using the QUESTAR format, which stands for Question, Understanding, Evidence, Strategy, Test, Analysis, and Relevance. This format helps you analyze empirical research by clearly outlining the research question, the approach taken to answer it, and the implications of the findings. This assignment supports the course objective of developing your ability to critically read and evaluate empirical research papers. While you are encouraged to discuss the readings with others, your paper must be written in your own words. Please submit your QUESTAR papers on Canvas.

One Page Papers on Self-Selected Articles (10%). As part of your project, you will need to identify, read, and interpret primary scientific articles. Over the semester you will be required to read two articles for which you turn in a QUESTAR for each. The articles should help inform and motivate your course project. You should add one line at the bottom of your paper explain how the paper connects to your project topic. If there is no obvious connection between the articles you have selected/written about and the topic of your project, you may not received credit for these two papers. Please submit your QUESTAR papers on Canvas.

Here are some resources you can use as starting points to find research articles when you are lost as to where to search:

Ricky comments that these sites are useful for exploring unfamiliar topic areas, using the search results to identify researchers who explore questions that have the best fit with your own questions. You can then use standard research databases for a more thorough search (e.g., Google Scholar, PubMed, etc.). Elicit.com is most useful as a first sweeping search, and researchrabbitapp is a useful service if you already have some articles in a Zotero library that are relevant but need a deeper dive into related articles.

Creative Project. Project-based learning is the best. It is actually how most of us learn. Moreover, projects can be much more fun and engaging. And the best projects force you to use your knowledge in new ways. The project for this course is open ended in the following ways: you can create an artwork, music composition, video game, poem, short story (fiction), scientific essay arguing for a particular point of view, etc. that is motivated by concepts from cognitive neuroscience.

The project will be graded across three components:

Mid-semester Outline (20%). A 2 page paper that outlines your project or your term paper. Requirements:

  1. the project topic/question with some level of specificity (e.g., "visual perception" won't cut it)
  2. what concepts your plan to explore in your project and associated paper
  3. the format and structure of the actual project in some detail
  4. a list of primary references you are using to inform your project (not less than 3 at this point) with one line annotations about each reference
  5. Note that your first self-selected paper QUESTAR is also due at the same time as your outline, but should be turned in separately through that distinct assignment

End of semester Project+Paper (30%). A project+paper OR a longer, more straightforward scientific paper (either way, 30%). Requirements:

  1. If you do something creative (and actually create something), the expectation is 5 pages describing the connections/meaning of your work as it relates to cognitive neuroscience and related concepts. The paper should discuss what concepts your project is trying to convey as well as the scientific foundations behind these concepts. You should also synthesize what you learned in researching and creating your project. However, if you really do not want to do something creative, you can write a standard science term paper on some topic related to the course. In this latter case, the expectation is 10 pages.
  2. You must include references from primary sources: 5 if you submit a creative work and 10 if you do the standard science term paper.
  3. The paper format is maximum 1.5 line spacing and maximum 11-point Times New Roman, maximum 1” margins; the cover page and reference pages do not count towards your page total. Please remember to put your name on the paper!
  4. Along with the project and paper, you are expected to provide a 3 minute presentation of your project along the lines of a "Three Minute Thesis" (google search) - this is an opportunity for you to develop and showcase your communication skills. You have 3 options for this part of the assignment:
    1. Record a 3 minute video about your project and share it only with the instructor and the TAs. In this case email the video or a link to the video to the instructor.
    2. Record a 3 minute video about your project and share it with the class in our class meetings during the last week of classes. In this case email the video or a link to the video to the instructor AND the TAs by 5pm on April 21st.
    3. In person, do a live 3 minute presentation about your project and share it with the class in our class meetings during the last week of classes.
    4. You MUST do one of these three! Please follow the google link above for examples and guidance on creating a 3 minute presentation - definitely show us your project as part of the presentation!
  5. Note that for the projects, there is an online file submission associated with the assignment in Canvas. Make sure you submit your actual paper by file upload through this assignment. In your paper make sure you clearly identify your physical project or provide appropriate links - the basic idea is that we should be able to see everything related to your project within the paper plus pointers to anything on the web or that is physical. For physical projects, arrange to get them to me in Baker Hall 335d by the project deadline (5pm on April 25th). 

I would prefer that the project not be done as a group project. If you must do it as a group project, please let us know ASAP and understand that our expectations increase in terms of both quality/polish and content. Moreover, the page requirements increase to 15 pages if writing a standard scientific term paper and 10 pages if your paper is associated with a creative work.

Research Requirement. Mandatory - if not completed, incomplete in the course. Find information on Canvas under 85-101. A video explaining the requirement will be presented in class; you can also view it here.

Just get this done. It stinks to have to rush to try and complete this at the end of the semester or even worse, not do it and not have your grade released (seriously).

Late Work. You have a total of three grace days for the semester, which can be distributed accumulatively across QUESTARs and assignments. You don't need to email us when you use these grace days; we will automatically account for them at the end of the semester. Beyond these grace days, late submissions will not be accepted.

Regrade Policy. You can submit a regrade request for any assignment in this class until the next assignment of the same type is available (e.g., you can request a regrade for reading assignment 1 until assignment 2 is available). To request a regrade, email the entire teaching team (MJT and TAs) explaining what you missed, what the correct answer is, why you believe your answer should receive more points, and how many points you believe you should have received. We treat regrades as true regrades, meaning the entire assignment will be re-evaluated. If you were awarded fewer points than you deserved, you’ll receive additional points, but if there were any questions where you were given too many points, you’ll lose points on those. This approach ensures a fair opportunity to correct mistakes while discouraging regrade requests made solely to gain extra points.

Course Expectations

Attendance. Learning happens in class. Really. Hopefully you will get some value out of coming to class and paying attention (e.g., try to keep your phone put away and your laptop closed - if your phone rings in class, I might want to answer it for you...). If you don’t come to class, that is your choice, but I do notice and won’t be thrilled if you later need help with concepts covered in class. My favorite quote from last year was a student who had not been attending class, coming up to me after a lecture they did attend and saying "that was really cool, I should have been coming to class more!"; don't do that.

As my part of the bargain, I will try to make class interesting and (maybe) fun - I might diverge into some story, I might entertain an AMA about the class topic, etc. Also let us know what you want to get out of class more generally or for any specific topic and I will try to make it happen.

Lectures. Lectures will be recorded for later viewing, but will not be livestreamed (except by request when someone is ill and wishes to still participate in real time). Lecture slides can be found on Canvas by clicking on the lecture entry on the calendar or list below and following the link to the slide PDF.

Course Policies. The following guidelines help create a comfortable and productive learning environment throughout the semester.

You can expect me and your TAs:

  • To respect you as individuals
  • To give timely feedback
  • To assign work that meets the learning objectives of the course
  • To adhere to the time expectations for a 9 unit course
  • To provide clear and timely expectations for course requirements
  • To reply to emails within a reasonable time on weekdays and during normal hours

We expect you:

  • To be attentive and engaged, even if you are learning at a distance
  • Respect yourself and adhere to the highest level of academic integrity
  • To spend an adequate amount of time studying course materials each week so you can identify where you need clarification early in the learning process
  • To seek help when appropriate
  • To demonstrate academic integrity, even if you are learning at a distance

Academic Integrity. Any form of academic dishonesty will immediately earn you a failing grade for the relevant assignment, and possibly the entire course - depending on the extent and severity . By remaining enrolled, you consent to this policy. Please become familiar with the CMU guidelines on academic integrity. You are responsible for learning what constitutes a violation of academic integrity and adhering to these guidelines. Please be familiar with the CMU policies on academic integrity.

Acknowledgment of Help. For any assignments not completed entirely in class (e.g., exams or the project), you will be asked to provide a statement of help - who helped you (consider ChatGPT a who for these purposes - more on that below), how they helped you, and how much they helped you. You should put this at the top of every assignment you turn in. Note that misstating the amount of help you had is a clear violation of our Academic Integrity policies beyond simply receiving that help.

Distribution of Course Materials. I am a fan of open source software. Similarly, it seems that course materials should be publicly available – who knows who will learn what? To that end, when you download materials from our course, you have the ability to share these beyond your own circle of friends – your fraternity/sorority, your dorm, your clubs, Course Hero, Napster, etc. We live in an era where it is normal to share information regardless of ownership.

Acknowledging this, I won’t ask you not to share these materials – if someone uses them, they are learning more than they otherwise might have! But I expect you to fully attribute these materials to me, the course/year, and Carnegie Mellon.

Congratulations on reading a good bit of the syllabus! You get an extra credit point by going to this web page, reading the article, and then sending an email to Prof. Tarr telling him who presented, what they presented, and where they presented. One line should suffice. Don't tell your friends - make them read the syllabus too!

ChatGPT. Look, ChatGPT is pretty ridiculously amazing and you can learn a lot from it, but please have some commonsense. Our expectation is that you might use ChatGPT to:

  • Look up explanations about a specific topic
  • Create an outline for a paper
  • Clean up an already-written paper by asking ChatGPT to help rewrite it
  • We are sure you might think of other course-related applications

On the other hand you shouldn’t use ChatGPT to:

  • Write an entire paper or QUESTAR for you, including providing both the structure and the content (BTW, ChatGPT is often wrong about facts when given such prompts, so if you try this you will probably have blatantly incorrect things in your paper)
  • Use ChatGPT for finding out facts or information de novo - again, ChatGPT often gets confused and mashes together ideas or facts. As a rule, Wikipedia does a much better job providing factual information and references as it relates to a specific topic (but ChatGPT is better at explaining things). You ARE allowed to use Wikipedia, which isn’t that different from the ancient print convention of an encyclopedia. However, in your writing assignments, we expect you to use primary sources, so if you use Wikipedia, you still need to go down the rabbit hole of finding and reading primary sources.
  • As a coda on this point, last time around in this course, failure to use primary sources was the most common problem with final papers. DO NOT rely on and cite Wikipedia/Websites/etc. for your paper (arXiv is okay though).

The basic principle is that if you use ChatGPT on any aspect of your writing assignments, you will provide a short summary of how you used it, including any prompts you used (e.g., “Write me an outline for a 5 page paper on prosopagnosia.”), If you did not use ChatGPT in your writing assignment, please state this explicitly in your Acknowledgment of Help: “I did not consult or use ChatGPT on this assignment.” All that being said, we will definitely incorporate ChatGPT and its cousins into various aspects of the course. Note that passing off AI generated content as your own (e.g., cutting and pasting content into written assignments, or closely paraphrasing AI content) constitutes a violation of CMU’s academic integrity policy. If you have any questions about using generative AI in this course, please email or talk to me.

If you are curious, CMU put together a short course on generative AI. There are a series of online modules you can peruse by self-enrolling in the Canvas course https://canvas.cmu.edu/enroll/XELHEH (and then clicking on the button to enroll). After you enroll, you can access the Generative AI Modules directly or from your list of courses in the Canvas dashboard.

Practical Matters

Accommodations. We will accommodate students who have vetted accommodations through the Office of Equal Opportunity Services, Disability Resources.. Please contact the Office of Equal Opportunity Services to request an accommodation. It is your responsibility to coordinate with the Office of Equal Opportunity Services to arrange accommodations. Please be attentive to making timely arrangements so that we may accommodate you. Please share your disability accommodation paperwork with Dr. Tarr within the first two weeks of classes. We need time to arrange for suitable accommodations and will not retroactively adjust assignments, etc. based on accommodations you had not yet requested.

How to Contact Your Instructors. Please be advised that me and our TAs will do their best to answer emails in a timely manner, but please do not expect to receive responses immediately or at all on weekends for the most part. Our email loads are heavy. Plan accordingly by reviewing the material early so that there is time to ask questions well before any quiz or deadline. When contacting us, please explain the nature of your question(s) and include your availability to meet for the next week if you would like to meet with us. We know that asking questions can be intimidating, but we encourage you to do so. If you would like a little encouragement and guidance about how to do it, you might read this blog post.

Technical Help. PROBLEMS WITH CMU SSO authentication or software: Contact CMU IT-help by emailing it-help@andrew.cmu.edu or calling 412-268-4357.

Internet Connectivity Problems. If you are learning off campus and experience difficulties with internet connectivity, please be in touch with Prof. Tarr, who can help you to navigate how to get help. You are going to need a laptop or computer to succeed in this course.  If that is a problem, please be in touch with me.

General Well-Being and Stress. It has been a extremely strange and challenging several years (I wrote this several years ago, but it still seems to be relevant). It is natural to be experiencing stress, even during the most “normal” times. Do your best to follow guidelines to keep physically healthy (I personally bike almost every day - ask me questions about bikes, I love it - and eat my leafy greens whenever possible…). Do your best to maintain a healthy lifestyle this semester by eating well, exercising, avoiding drugs and alcohol, getting enough sleep and taking some time to relax. This will help you achieve your goals and cope with stress.

All of us benefit from support during times of struggle. You are not alone. There are many helpful resources available on campus and an important part of the college experience is learning how to ask for help. Asking for support sooner rather than later is often helpful. It is courageous to reach out for help.

If you or anyone you know experiences any academic stress, difficult life events, or feelings like anxiety or depression, we strongly encourage you to seek support. Counseling and Psychological Services (CaPS) Links to an external site. is here to help, 412-268-2922. Consider reaching out to a friend, faculty or family member you trust for help getting connected to the support that can help. Your instructor can point you to resources.

If you or someone you know is feeling suicidal or in danger of self-harm, call someone immediately, day or night you can contact Re:solve Crisis Network: 888-796-8226. If the situation is life-threatening, call the police. (CMU Police: 412-268-2323; Off-campus: 911).

If you or someone you know is experiencing food insecurity -- worry about affording food -- there are campus resources to help. Email to schedule an appointment, cmu-pantry@andrew.cmu.edu, 412-268-8704 (SLICE office).  Also, please check out the Psychology undergraduate lounge on the third floor of Baker Hall, which is meant to provide you with a place to relax and restore yourself.

MinionsAhead.jpg Note that the date of each lecture is listed here as well as all assignments. Lectures also appear on the Canvas calendar. If you click on a given lecture, you will see both the zoom link and a link to the slides PDF for that lecture.

Zoom links are listed for each lecture so that the lecture can be recorded and made available through Canvas. By default you CANNOT use a zoom link to attend class unless you have discussed this with the instructor and obtained permission. Otherwise you will be stuck in the waiting room.

Course Summary:

Course Summary
Date Details Due
CC Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike This course content is offered under a CC Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license. Content in this course can be considered under this license unless otherwise noted.