What would you call "Brain Chemistry"?

<p>as a freshman I decided I’d be a neuroscience major -- i soon realized that over 90% kids in my major were aspiring to be veterinarians or going into medicine or pharm schools -- i switched out into chemistry because i loved chemistry -- unfortunately with hardcore chemistry there are few places which are also involved with neuroscience – neuroscience is under biology's jurisdiction -- chemistry is much more fundamental in its essence (small molecules, catalysts, physical phenomena) -- while neuroscience has much more to do with biology (large molecular aggregates, enzymes, cells, tissue culture)</p>

<p>so in summary there is not a lot of neurochemistry out there</p>

<p>what I would suggest is that he picks a place where there is a prof or two doing research in neuroscience area and which has strong biology and chemistry departments – this way he can major under chemistry or biology departments, take regular courses in all sorts of subjects, take may be a few neurosciences courses (schools don’t usually offer very many of these), but also have a hands-on experience working on some project that related to neuroscience – neuroscience sounds very alluring, but in reality you either make molecules or run gels, so he has to pick whether he’d want to sacrifice being a hardcore chemist to get deeper into neuroscience field or if he really doesn’t want to be a biologist (I would suggest being a chemist, because chemistry is like the foundation for biology and a few times I met biologists who had no idea about any chemistry, because they only took bio classes and hated o-chem, and then they engage in bs science – like try to couple something to a cell using some very weird and impractical reagents – while it is easier to catch up with biology being a chemist) </p>

<p>afterwards if your kid wants to do research, he needs to get a PhD -- he'll have to choose to apply to either chemistry or biology programs – it is one or the other -- and unfortunately there are not a lot of places that combine studying brain and using chemistry – most biological chemistry focuses on enzymes, proteins, human diseases like Alzheimer’s, NMR to study macromolecules, etc -- while there are more schools that combine biology and neuroscience – I know of just one school, Caltech, where there are two hardcore chemistry professors that also do neuroscience – but I’m sure there might be a few others</p>

<p>another option is pharmacy school</p>