Question: Do your studies resemble studying psychology?

Emma Cahill answered on 14 Nov 2013:

Hi orlaith, Yes there is a lot of overlap. Neuroscience really came into its own quite recently in history and the sort of questions we ask are similar. Both Psychology and Neuroscience want to understand how our minds (our brains) work. Psychologists work with people, often studying disorders by testing their responses to questions or ability to do tasks. Neuroscientists can also work with Humans, by scanning brain activity using large MRI machines while they do the tasks (this is part of whats called Cognitive Neuroscience). A lot of Neuroscientists use animal models, because this way we can control better the experiments and afterwards get access to the brain to study at the genetic, molecular or cellular level what is going on. There are also Neuroscientists who just use computers! they program and test different models that might explain how the brain works, because in some ways our brain functions like an electric circuit.
Really Neuroscience grew out of psychology when people began to have molecular techniques to probe deeper into the biology of how we think, act and feel. They are both really complementary to eachother.
Hope that clears it up a bit!
Emma