Our department is committed to fostering critical thinking and scientific reasoning skills in an inclusive and collaborative environment that encourages creative exploration and discovery. Students learn in the classroom and through hands-on research experiences, and they are tasked with sharing their knowledge with others at the University and beyond. Students have the option to declare a Psychology degree (B.A. or B.S. tracks) or a Neuroscience degree (B.S.).
We study the basic processes that enable us to learn about our environment and to learn from our mistakes, with implications for everything from student performance to affective disorders.
We seek to understand what knowledge structures are innate, how learned knowledge is acquired over a lifetime, and how the accumulation of knowledge is affected by developmental disorders, neurological disorders, and early-life stress or exposures to environmental toxicants.
We examine when and why individuals cooperate with or trust one another and investigate how we come to hold moral beliefs and understand social norms. We aim to understand how social change happens, and to lever this knowledge to address real-world problems including climate change.
Our faculty study each of these areas from multiple perspectives: from animal models and computational models, to systems and cognitive neuroscience, to behavioral and psychophysiological measurements from individuals or groups. This work involves studying basic processes with translational impact—including affective disorders, such as anxiety and depression; developmental disorders; and ethics and law.
Our faculty collaborate with:
The Department of Psychology and Neuroscience has Google Drive folders that may be of interest to undergrads:
This month, the Petrovich lab published two papers.
Rebecca Shteyn, former graduate student Danielle Lafferty and Gorica Petrovich have published a paper in Physiology & Behavior: Impact of satiety on palatable food associative learning and consumption in male and female adult rats
Read it here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938425001362?via%3Dihub
Zoe Irving and former graduate student Eliza Greiner and research assistants Mark Indriolo and Zhe Liu have published a paper in Brain Structure & Function: Activation patterns in male and female forebrain areas during habituation to food and context novelty
Read it here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00429-025-02927-3
Show MoreCongratulations to graduating neuroscience seniors Tracy Aggrey-Ansong and Haley Echols for winning two Ever To Excel awards! In a ceremony on Monday, April 28, Aggrey-Ansong was given the St Ignatius Award for Faith in Action and Echols was given the Welles Remy Crowther award.
See the other awardees here: https://www.bc.edu/content/bc-web/offices/studentaffairs/sites/student-involvement/leadership-development/ever-to-excel-awards/award-recipients.html
Show More
Congratulations to our Dean's and Sophomore Scholars who were honored at a dinner event last night!
Congratulations to the Psychology & Neuroscience 2025 Dean's and Sophomore Scholars! This year's recipients are:
Neuroscience
Sophomores: Madison Grady, Peyton Zarate
Juniors: Yudam Chang, Tyler de Grandpre, Madeleine Pinney
Psychology
Sophomores: Kelly Choi, Faith Hochgesang, Lizzy Lamprey, Sarah McNickle, Dave Nelson, Angel Wang
Juniors: Miracle Hodge, Pearl Miller, Veronica Wells
Show MoreFormer Lab Tech David Williams and the McDannald Lab have published an article on fear conditioning in rats in the journal eLife.
Read it here: https://elifesciences.org/articles/102782#content
A 2024 paper authored by psychology professors Gene Heyman, Ehri Ryu, and Hiram Brownell titled "Evidence that intergenerational income mobility is the strongest predictor of drug overdose deaths in U. S. Midwest counties" has been featured in the Boston College Chronicle, the BC News website, and EurekAlert, the news service of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Heyman was interviewed for the article, explaining the goal of the research and its findings.
Read the article here: https://www.bc.edu//content/bc-web/sites/bc-news/articles/2025/spring/income-mobility-and-opioid-overdoses.html
Show MoreDr. Maureen Ritchey, associate professor and director of the Memory Modulation Lab, has been awarded the 2025 Early Investigator Award from the Society of Experimental Psychologists. Congrats!
Undergraduates are integrated into our department through coursework, participation in independent research and honors theses, inclusion in departmental colloquia and workshops, and the Psychology Undergraduate Research Conference. They become critical thinkers as they reflect on topics at the core of the human experience: how we learn through experiences; how brain cells give rise to thought; how context influences everything; and which aspects of human behavior are easily controlled and which proceed without conscious awareness.
Each year the department welcomes into our Ph.D. program a select group of outstanding students. Focusing on original research, this program is aimed at students who intend to become research psychologists and neuroscientists, participating in the search for knowledge about the human mind and brain. Working in close collaboration with a primary and secondary faculty mentor, students design studies, publish papers, apply for grants, and attend professional conferences. Our program is designed to help you acquire the professional skills and scientific knowledge needed to pursue your intellectual interests and to become our fields' leaders.
Assistant Professor
Associate Professor
Behavioral Scientist/Epidemiologist
Scientific Project Manager
Senior Research Associate
Project Director
Lecturer
Postdoc
Assistant Professor
Professor Liane Young, whose research has shed light on moral judgment and decision-making, has been awarded a $2.8-million grant from The John Templeton Foundation to join with fellow Boston College researchers to study how social norms influence virtue.
