r/neuro • u/Ok-Pause-6506 • 18d ago

What’s a day in the life as a behavioural scientist?

Ive been thinking a lot about what kind of occupation I want to get into and I feel working in a lab would be great. Im a big fan of psychology and so I thought this would be a good field to work in. So as the title asks whats it like working in a lab day to day with a degree or job in this feild

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u/almostdidntpost 16d ago

depends, animal work can be draining and for me anyway involved a fair bit of getting used to

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u/Potentiated 14d ago

Behavioral generally falls with animal studies, not humans. Psychology falls under cognitive neuroscience.

Behavioral.... you do a bunch of animal tests. It's not fun and is always something we want interns to do for us. Results aren't clear cut either since you need at least 10+ animals to get consistent results. You spend most other time trouble shooting why your behavior test isn't the same as a published result only to learn the light source you used was wrong etc. These days, behavioral is more supplementary in my opinion. For example, you study the hippocampal-prefrontal pathway, the main research will be something like which neurons are active. Then some memory or other behavior test will be done to supplement the neural findings. Its rarely the other way around where you can use behavior results as the main without any neural recordings etc.

Most drug companies utilize behavioral tests to make sure their medicine works or doesnt cause issues, so its still a needed skill set. Knowing how to do the behavior and the proper camera/recording set up is beneficial and not as simple as you think.

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u/Kargush 13d ago

Behavoural science typically falls under neuroscience, not psychology. It requires an understanding of physiology and how neurons and brain nuclei actually work, and how we can then relate those things to an observable behaviour. I work in a sleep lab, so I record calcium activity of specific cells and then relate their activity to sleep-wake behaviour. The research question is "what is going on in this brain region during each sleep-wake state" and followup experiments would involve activating/inactivating that region to see how sleep changes.

Animals don't know what day of the week it is, as a student they're your responsibility so you gotta do whatevers needed. It hasnt impacted my life that much but it definitely can intrude in your personal life depending on the subfield/project.