Research interests of faculty members encompass numerous types of behavior such as feeding and foraging, aggression and defense, learning and motivation, memory, communication, play, stress, and exercise. Faculty members address research questions from a range of theoretical perspectives including comparative psychology, behavioral ecology, ethology, health psychology, behavioral neuroendocrinology, and cognitive and behavioral neuroscience. Corresponding to our range of interests, laboratories in the Neuroscience & Behavior Group employ numerous methodological approaches including hormone assays, pharmacological approaches (microinjections), cellular and molecular approaches (immunohistochemistry, viral-mediated gene transfer), electrophysiological approaches, naturalistic observation and field experiments, acoustic analyses, and behavioral testing. Faculty and students also work closely with others on campus and in the Knoxville community interested in the biological basis of behavior including colleagues in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Biochemistry Cellular and Molecular Biology, College of Veterinary Medicine, Forestry Wildlife and Fisheries Department, Cole Neuroscience Center at the UT Medical Center, Biosciences Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratories, Zoo Knoxville, and Neuroscience Network of East Tennessee (NeuroNET).
Learn More
To learn more about us, we encourage you to visit the web pages of our core faculty and their respective laboratories. Feel free to contact individual faculty members about undergraduate research opportunities and graduate training.