Biological Sciences 300/301, Smith College | Neurophysiology
Tips on Writing about Neuroscience
http://www.science.smith.edu/departments/NeuroSci/courses/bio330/labs/L8tips.html
Audience
You are writing for informed readers, such as other students in our course. You need to explain your ideas at a level they would understand, but you don't need to define common neuroscience terms.
Concision
In a short paper, you haven't got a lot of space. Get right down to your central point in the first paragraph. Don't ramble on, and don't spend a page "setting up" the problem.
Factual
Support
Science papers are rich in facts. Give explicit factual support for ideas that you are advocating....
Logical
Structure
...but don't give us a jumble of facts without logical support for your overall argument. Facts need to be in service of basic ideas, and the connection between the big picture and the little details needs to be clear at all times. Use explicit transitions to help us see where each paragraph is going.
Clarity
In addition to clear logical structure for the overall paper, make each sentence simple and clear as well. False "elegance" is no virtue here. Write as if you were talking to the reader. Tell us what you want us to know.
Quotes
Quotes are seldom needed in science papers. The idea, not the exact words, is what you should be borrowing from your sources. If you can't say it in your own words, you probably haven't understood it. But do give citations for important facts or ideas, usually as the author(s) and year of publication, all in parentheses, such as "(Hodgkin and Huxley, 1952)" or "as Hodgkin and Huxley (1952) showed...."
Balance
If the assignment asks you to discuss topics A, B, and C, don't spend all your time on topic A -- unless it is the real heart of the assignment, and B and C are merely brief extensions. Try to balance the importance of the subtopics and the space you give them.
Common
Word
Mixups
Some words often turn up where another word was intended. Some common examples in neuroscience are:
Elicit means to evoke or stimulate. Illicit means illegal or forbidden. You probably mean "elicit" unless you are writing about illegal drugs.
Affect is the verb, meaning to modify something. Effect is the noun, the change or consequence that results. (OK, under rare circumstances, affect can be a noun (emotion) and effect can be a verb (put into action). You probably don't intend those meanings, however.)
Ganglion is the singular, ganglia the plural. (A ganglion is a cluster of neurons in a nervous system, such as the chain of ganglia that form the nerve cord of a crayfish.)
Innervate is an anatomical or developmental term that means to make connections to a target. To decribe sending spikes along that pathway to affect the target, use activate or a more specific word like excite or inhibit. "Motoneuron axons in the first roots innervate the swimmeret muscles. Spikes in those neurons excite the muscle cells and cause contraction."
© 2004, 2007 by Richard F. Olivo. Permission is granted to non-profit educational institutions to reproduce or adapt this Web page for internal use provided that the original source and copyright are acknowledged.