NEUROSCIENCE: PAPER AND PRESENTATION GUIDELINES Length: Approximately two to five pages single spaced. Some people like to write more but when you reached five pages, it’s time to cool it down. Format The paper should have a title, which expressed its theme. Obviously the name of the author should follow the title. Then a 50 – 100 word abstract The body of the paper should include an Introduction, which presents the background to your particular topic and a clear statement of the question you are examining: “I intend to examine research claiming that pesticide exposure is a cause of violent behavior.” Next you have a Results section where you present the results of your research. You will also want to include a Discussion section where you discuss the implications of your findings and what conclusions you arrive at. The latter might also be included in a separate Conclusions section, though that is optional. Statements must be referenced, i.e., Recent research has demonstrated that genetically engineered mice show superior performance on accepted tests of learning (Tsien, J., 2000). For this course, you must assume that your audience is broad and you may want to include a glossary defining technical terms. Finally you have a Reference section. Tsien, J. Building a brainier mouse. Scientific American, April 2000, pp 62-68. This is a sample reference for the statement on genetically engineered mice. Naturally, if you use online sources, you reference the website. The Internet has blurred the distinction between a scientific and popular articles but you can find many technical and popular articles online. Newspaper and popular magazine articles do not count as publications for this course. Scientific American articles are totally acceptable. For the purposes of this course, I would consider the NY Times Science/Health section to be an acceptable research source. However, scientific articles are peer reviewed, which helps to maintain quality control. Peer review is far from perfect but I would be unwilling to abandon it. There is enough junk out there anyway without totally opening the floodgates. Overall, you may use APA or AAAS format, as long as you are consistent