Neuroscience research is frequently presented in outlets intended for the lay public--newspapers, popular magazines (Time, Newsweek, and the like), and websites, as written by science writers (or sometimes by the scientists themselves). Your job in this assignment is to start with a piece of "neuroscience news" in the popular press, and work backwards to find the scientific article on which the press report is based. Start by searching for science stories in newspapers, magazines, or websites (such as the medical website WebMD or a science press outlet such as ScienCentral), or by subscribing to the Biopsych/Behavioral Neuroscience Newsletter (see instructions below). Then, you will track down the published article on which the news report is based. Note that the report of a conference proceeding is not appropriate--the research must be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. TOPICS (lay summaries and their associated articles) must be approved by me by March 19th.
Your primary job will be to make sense of the primary research article on which the press treatment is based. You will need to get a handle on the basic research questions posed and the methods used to address that question. You will also need to determine the accuracy of the lay presentation of the work and communicate what you have learned (about the research study and the press treatment) to the rest of the class (or at least to me). You have three choices for how you will accomplish this assignment:
A. Summarize your article and its press summary in a 15-20 minute presentation, during the last week of the semester. Your presentation should address the following issues: Why was this research deemed "newsworthy"? Is the research groundbreaking in some way? Does it refute previously held theories? Does it provide empirical evidence of previously speculative hypotheses? Does the research have controversial societal implications? Your presentation should also provide a summary of what was actually done in the empirical research study, and point out if the news report was accurate. Outstanding presentations will include references to material covered during the course of the semester, highlighting connections wherever appropriate.
B. Similar to option A, option B is to address these same issues, but rather than in an oral presentation, you accomplish this in written format, in an 8-10 page paper that is a summary/critique of the journal article and its press treatment (due on the last day of class, Friday 5/2). Your paper should include a background section that summarizes the previous state of the research area, and should discuss the same basic things that would be addressed in an oral presentation. Note that Wikipedia is a fine source for getting an overall picture of a particular concept but it should not be considered a scholarly source. You must cite scholarly sources in this paper.
C. Students that choose option C will use Adobe Acrobat (the professional version you can download from ACC, not the free "reader" that is widely available) to "annotate" a PDF version of the journal article (not its lay press counterpart, although you can draw on the lay article in your annotation). Your job is to explain, expand, enhance, and put into context this particular article. Imagine that you are reading the article and interesting things occur to you so you jot them down in the margin--maybe something the author said reminds you of something you learned about in class. Maybe there is something discussed that you would like to learn more about so you read up on it by tracking down one of the background sources. The Comment function in Acrobat allows you to highlight sections of text and insert your own commentary. You are to use this function to add annotations throughout the paper. Of utmost importance is for you to put into context the importance of this particular paper. Editorialize if you wish--in most cases, scientific writing is restrained in terms of what makes a particular finding or investigation ground-breaking (your consideration of the press treatment of the article will help you in finding this context). Your job is to underscore the importance of the points that are made throught the paper. Annotations in the introduction should highlight what the study intended to find out, and why it is important. Annotations in the method section might allow for an elaboration on the methodology--in most cases, methods sections are written with an assumption that those in the field understand the choice of methodology. You could comment on why a particular experimental model is useful, and its common applications. In the results section, you might want to point out in each figure where the most important, telling effects are illustrated (without simply repeating information in the figure caption). You may also want to critique the conclusions drawn, or elaborate on their importance, using whatever tools are available to you. Whatever else you choose to highlight is up to you. You may highlight one of the authors of the study (appropriate especially when the author is famous) and write a brief biography of the author's important contributions (and why they are important). It will also be useful to find other articles by the same author/lab (oftentimes, the last author is the Principal Investigator) to get a sense of where this paper fits within the framework of a larger research area. There is no set minimum or maximum on how much to write, but I'm looking for a similar amount of effort that you could expect to put into a 5-7 page journal article summary/critique/contextualization assignment (roughly 1500-2000 words--it may help you gauge your progress to write your material as a Word document, and later insert your comments into the PDF). Selected annotated PDF's will be posted to the course webpage for future students to reference. The "due date" for the annotated PDF is Friday, 5/2, the last day of classes.
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