-From the Preface

Using engaging, disarming prose, author Mary Harrington shows neuroscience students how to go about selecting a topic, designing an experiment, analyzing the results, and publishing a paper. This text effectively illustrates basic research methods and design principles by uniquely using relevant examples from neuroscience such as the principles of design of fMRI studies, the use of transgenic mice, and conditional gene knockouts. The author also addresses basic professional ethics, fundamental statistics and data analysis tools, the range of possible experimental designs (from simple descriptive studies to multifactorial designs), and ways to control unwanted variables and avoid common pitfalls.