1. Topic of your choosing within the field of Affective Neuroscience. Pick a topic that interests you, and that would be fun and a creative challenge to write about. It could be about one particular theory, or about one phenomenon and how different theories (and experiments) see it. This paper is a review of literature with your critical comments. You want to show off your critical thinking ability: what do you agree with, what you don’t agree with, what might be some alternative explanations you think are better, and why? Don’t just say: I like this theory/hypothesis; you need to explain why. You can provide critical comments throughout the paper or do them all in the last page or two. 2. 8 — 10 pages + a separate reference page; double spaced, point 12; APA style (you don’t need the abstract and the first page title). However, the first page MUST have the title and your name on it. The paper needs to be written in an academic APA style. The style is not optional. 3. You need at least 8 references from peer-review scientific journals. These have to be recent, in the last 10 years, and need to be about the brain basis of what you are writing about. A good place to start are review papers on your topic in major journals, such as Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Current Biology, or Neuron. Primarily check the database. 4. Upload your final paper to Assignments section of Brightspace, AND email it as an attachment. No hard copies. Acceptable file formats are: docx, pdf, pages. Google docs need to be converted to MSWord. 5. IMPORTANT: Your file must be titled as follows: “Your last name_final paper” (NOT: ‘my final paper’ or, ‘that paper I wrote’, or any such title) General tips for writing papers: • Provide a general overview of what you’re going to talk about, as defined by question. • Provide definitions. • Look for seminal work (a good place to look is recent reviews, etc), rather than focusing on specific papers. • But if summarizing specific studies, try to relate this back to a general idea. Many people seem to get stuck in a few esoteric references they found, but missed the forest through the trees. • On the other hand, when summarizing specific studies, another common pitfall was to leave out key facts. A good strategy is to first think about why you’re including a specific study – what does it illustrate, how does it relate back to your main point and the bigger picture? In most cases, summarizing specific studies is tricky because brain areas/neurotransmitters/etc. are associated with a myriad of different tasks/functions/etc. • The whole point of these papers, as I see it, is to convince me (but more importantly, to convince yourself), that you understand something at a more general level. So going through the basics first is fine (and encouraged). After, try to take it a step further by discussing what different groups have theorized, what research supports each idea, what research doesn’t support each idea, etc. **pls send draft in 48 hours
