Cellular, Molecular and Developmental Neuroscience

NSC 511 builds up the nervous system from the bottom: how a single neuron generates and propagates signals, how synapses pass them on through ion channels and second messengers, and how all of this gets wired up during development into circuits that drive movement, sensation, and emotion. Most of the work is lectures plus a homework assignment and class discussion, with a midterm and final that expect you to reason mechanistically rather than just recall pathways. It's a graduate-level foundation course, so it assumes comfort with cell biology and biochemistry, and it's the layer you stand on before tackling systems neuroscience, neuropharmacology, or research on neurological and psychiatric disorders.