Difference between Neuroscience and Neurobiology?

What is the difference between Neuroscience and Neurobiology?

• If I were to chose one of them to pursue a masters degree, what would I be studying differently in each of the subjects?

• Answer:

  There are really three fields to differentiate: neurology, neurobiology, and neuroscience.   The difference mainly has to do with emphasis, and there is a lot of overlap.   neurology -- a branch of medicine focused on the clinical aspects of the brain and nervous system. The central question is figuring out what is going wrong and what to do about it.   neurobiology -- a branch of biology focused on the anatomy and physiology of the brain and nervous system, often across animal species. The central question is what is there and what are its properties. This might include classifying cell types, tracing pathways, understanding structural differences, brain development patterns, and the mechanisms of neurotransmitters. To a neurobiologist, the brain is first and formost an anatomical organ composed of living cells. neuroscience -- also a branch of biology, but the focus is much more on mechanism and understanding how the human brain works. The central question is how does the brain produce observed behavior. Neuroscience includes neurobiology and extends it to theoretical models, neural coding, mapping of cognitive science and psychology onto brain activity (fMRI), neural dynamics (e.g. oscillations), and models of learning, perception, and behavior. When animals are studied in neuroscience, it is as a proxy for understanding humans. Neurology is the oldest field. Neurobiology came later. And neuroscience is the newest framing now that it is becoming possible to observe what is going on in the brain and begin to explain how it is working. "Neurobiology" and "neuroscience" can almost be used interchangeably.