Neurobiology Personal Statement

Neurobiology is the multidisciplinary study of the nervous system, its constituents neurons and glia, and the interaction between the nervous system and other systems such as muscular system. Though there is evidence of neurosurgery from ancient civilizations (eg. trepanation by Mayans), modern neurobiology has its roots in experiments carried out by Luigi Galvani demonstrating the electrical properties of nerves, anatomical studies carried out by Paul Broca localizing the speech centers of the brain, as well as histological studies performed by Santiago Ramon y Cajal using a modification of Golgi staining which demonstrated the cellular nature of the brain - the so-called neuron doctrine. If I am admitted into the Masters degree in Biological

While at Hudson Valley Community College I took classes in physics up to Physics III where I worked with models of various circuits (eg. RC circuit), harmonic oscillators (eg. particle in a box) and waves (eg. electromagnetic waves), and calculus classes up to differential equations where I learned to analytically solve equations related to these sorts of systems among others and solved systems of linear differential equations. On top of mathematics and physics related classes, I took two classes on programming where I programmed in Java working with various data structures (eg. linked lists) - on my own I have learned the Python language and have worked with perceptrons using Python - and I took general and abnormal psychology classes gaining insight into the different perspectives of psychology and learning the symptoms of some disorders. At University at Albany I took Introduction to Biopsychology and Behavioral Neuroscience, Neurobiology and Neurophysiology where I learned some of the neural, endocrinological and genetic underpinnings of psychiatric disease, the molecular biological and physical underpinnings of neuroscience and performed extracellular recordings of invertebrate neurons (eg. ERG of crayfish eye to measure flicker fusion frequency), respectively. I have also performed enzyme and ligand binding assays (eg. measured binding affinity of avidin to biotin) and have learned to identify tissue specific details using light microscopes (eg. Rough Endoplasmic Reticula in Nissl stained neurons) from labs in biochemistry and histology,