. As an example, the theme of your report might be imaging approaches to the study of schizophrenia. Your paper should summarize fundamental issues, questions, and controversies and provide a general overview of the topic. It should also elaborate on your understanding of the brain processes that are revealed through imaging research in schizophrenia. To accomplish this, you will have to use research articles to illustrate relevant points. You may use any of a number of resources to find research articles that deal with your topic, including the library and the Internet.
This paper is not a “commentary” or “editorial” style paper, but rather a formal research paper using scientific references as the basis for your topic. Personal experience, while sometimes relevant, should not be included for this assignment unless these experiences are linked to course concepts and the brain. Also, you should avoid using personal pronouns such as “I” or “myself” in this type of paper. The requirement for the research articles that you select is that they must have appeared in a peer-reviewed (i.e., refereed) scientific journal. (Please contact your instructor to confirm whether a particular journal is peer-reviewed.)
You must use peer-reviewed scientific articles and they must be recent, i.e., have appeared in the literature no earlier than 2010. Ten to 20 is typically a good number of articles to use for your paper. You might use the online databases from MEDLINE and PSYCH ABSTRACTS as a source of full-text articles from refereed journals. Newspaper or magazine articles should not be used as your major reference, but can be useful if they lead you to the appropriate research article. You should avoid simply repeating the articles in summary form; rather, use them within the text of your paper to illustrate important points. To ensure that you are on the right track, you should discuss with your instructor the topic and the research articles that you have chosen.
